ess to others--little sharp words which did
not seem so bad at the time, careless or selfish neglect of the wishes
we could have gratified with just a little trouble--how they all rise up
_afterwards_ and refuse to be forgotten! Our grief may then exaggerate
our past unkindness perhaps, and, as is the way with our weak human
nature, things out of our reach seem of double value; the affection we
knew to be always at hand we never prized enough till we lost it. But
should we not take this as a warning? Avoid the _habit_ of small
unkindnesses, of sharp, hurting words--even though in your heart you do
not mean them. Try, my darlings, every hour and every day, to behave to
each other as you would wish to have behaved, were this day to be your
last together. Then indeed even the sore parting of death would lose
half its bitterness--the kingdom of Heaven would already have begun in
your own hearts--the happy kingdom where there is neither sorrow nor
bitterness, nor tears--the kingdom over which reigns the beautiful
Spirit of Love.

At last there came a day on which the doctor said that without risk
Maudie might be taken to see Hoodie--only to see her--there was no
thought of her speaking to Hoodie, or Hoodie to her, for the little girl
was lying in a stupor--quite quiet and unconscious, and out of this
stupor, though he did not say so, Dr. Reynolds had but little hope of
her waking to life again. The fever had let her go at last, had thrown
her down, as it were, careless of how she fell, and the poor little
shaken worn-out Hoodie that it had left there, white and thin and
lifeless, hardly seemed as if it _could_ ever rouse up again to live and
talk and play--and there was nothing to do but to wait.

So Maudie was carried into the room where this unfamiliar Hoodie was
lying, and allowed to look at her poor little face and to cry quietly to
herself as she looked. In whose arms, children, do you think she was
carried? It was in Magdalen's. When she heard of the trouble that had
fallen over her little friends she could not rest till she came to them.
She had had the fever long ago, she wrote; she was so strong that
nursing never made her ill or tired--she could sit up a whole week of
nights without being knocked up. But when she arrived she found that in
the way of actual nursing there was little to do. Hoodie lay still and
lifeless--all the restlessness gone; for her indeed, it seemed to
Magdalen, there would never again be anyt