ouldn't I like to be able to afford to have one of them, and
nurses, and governesses, and everything proper for the children! I should
like to dress them so nicely, and give them such a good education. I
don't know anything particular to speak of, myself--I shall never be
able to teach them when they grow older. If Fred, now, was only to be
trusted, and would go and work like a man and make something for the
children, I daresay I could keep up the house;--but if he won't do
anything, you know, it will take us every farthing just to live. Look
here, Dr Edward: I have two hundred a-year;--Susan had the same, you
know, but Fred got all the money when they were married, and muddled it
away. Now, how much can one do in Carlingford with three children upon
two hundred a-year?"

"Fred will be the meanest blackguard in existence," cried the doctor,
"if he takes his living from you."

"He took his living from _you_, it appears," said Nettie, coolly, "and
did not thank you much. We must make the best of him. We can't help
ourselves. Now, there is the pretty church, and there is our little
house. Come in with me and answer for me, Dr Edward. You can say I
am your sister-in-law, you know, and then, perhaps, we can get into
possession at once; for," said Nettie, suddenly turning round upon the
doctor with her brilliant eyes shining out quaintly under the little
brow all puckered into curves of foresight, "it is so sadly expensive
living where we are now."

To look at the creature thus flashing those shining eyes, not without a
smile lurking in their depths, upon him--to see the triumphant, undaunted,
undoubting youthfulness which never dreamt of failure--to note that
pretty anxiety, the look which might have become a bride in her first
troubles "playing at housekeeping," and think how desperate was the
position she had assumed, how dreary the burden she had taken upon
her--was almost too much for the doctor's self-control. He did not know
whether to admire the little heroine as half-divine, or to turn from
her as half-crazy. Probably, had the strange little spirit possessed a
different frame, the latter was the sentiment which would have influenced
the unimaginative mind of Edward Rider. But there was no resisting that
little brown Titania, with her little head overladen with its beautiful
hair, her red, delicate mouth closing firm and sweet above that little
decided chin, her eyes which seemed to concentrate the light. She seemed