d upon sombre
water, and upon high, glowing sky--she in my mother's rocker, placidly
sewing, as my mother used to do, and I pitifully lost in my father's
armchair, covertly gazing at her, in my father's way.

"Is you better, this even, sister, dear?" I asked.

"Oh, ay," she answered, vehemently, as my mother used to do. "Much
better."

"You're wonderful poorly."

"'Tis true," she said, putting the thread between her white little
teeth. "But," the strand now broken, "though you'd not believe it, Davy,
dear, I'm feeling--almost--nay, quite--well."

I doubted it. "'Tis a strange sickness," I observed, with a sigh.

"Yes, Davy," she said, her voice falling, her lips pursed, her brows
drawn down. "I'm not able t' make it out, at all. I'm feelin'--so
wonderful--queer."

"Is you, dear?"

"Davy Roth," she averred, with a wag of the head so earnest that strands
of flaxen hair fell over her eyes, and she had to brush them back again,
"I never felt so queer in all my life afore!"

"I'm dreadful worried about you, Bessie."

"Hut! as for that," said she, brightly, "I'm not thinkin' I'm goin' t'
_die_, Davy."

"Sure, you never can tell about sickness," I sagely observed.

"Oh, no!" said she. "I isn't got that--kind o'--sickness."

"Well," I insisted, triumphantly, "you're wonderful shy o' eatin' pork."

She shuddered.

"I wished I knowed what you had," I exclaimed impatiently.

"I wished you did," she agreed, frankly, if somewhat faintly. "For,
then, Davy, you'd give me a potion t' cure me."

She drew back the curtain--for the hundredth time, I vow--and peered
towards South Tickle.

"What you lookin' for?" I asked.

"I was thinkin', Davy," she said, still gazing through the window, "that
Skipper Zach Tupper might be comin' in from the Last Chance grounds with
a fish for breakfast."

The Last Chance grounds? 'Twas ignorance beyond belief! "Bessie," I
said, with heat, "is you gone mad? Doesn't you know that no man in his
seven senses would fish the Last Chance grounds in a light southerly
wind? Why----"

"Well," she interrupted, with a pretty pout, "you knows so well as me
that Zach Tupper haven't _got_ his seven senses."

"Bessie!"

She peeked towards South Tickle again; and then--what a wonder-worker
the divine malady is!--she leaned eagerly forward, her sewing falling
unheeded to the floor; and her soft breast rose and fell to a rush of
sweet emotion, and her lips parted in delicious wonderment, and th