utiful and bright and charming than ever she was before,
if such a thing can be"--and Hester turned away and fumbled with the
medicine-bottles, to hide her shame and grief.

CHAPTER V

After a little, both aunts were laboring upon a difficult and baffling
work in Helen's chamber. Patiently and earnestly, with their stiff old
fingers, they were trying to forge the required note. They made failure
after failure, but they improved little by little all the time. The
pity of it all, the pathetic humor of it, there was none to see; they
themselves were unconscious of it. Often their tears fell upon the notes
and spoiled them; sometimes a single misformed word made a note risky
which could have been ventured but for that; but at last Hannah produced
one whose script was a good enough imitation of Helen's to pass any but
a suspicious eye, and bountifully enriched it with the petting phrases
and loving nicknames that had been familiar on the child's lips from her
nursery days. She carried it to the mother, who took it with avidity,
and kissed it, and fondled it, reading its precious words over and over
again, and dwelling with deep contentment upon its closing paragraph:

"Mousie darling, if I could only see you, and kiss your eyes, and feel
your arms about me! I am so glad my practicing does not disturb you. Get
well soon. Everybody is good to me, but I am so lonesome without you,
dear mamma."

"The poor child, I know just how she feels. She cannot be quite happy
without me; and I--oh, I live in the light of her eyes! Tell her she
must practice all she pleases; and, Aunt Hannah--tell her I can't hear
the piano this far, nor hear dear voice when she sings: God knows I wish
I could. No one knows how sweet that voice is to me; and to think--some
day it will be silent! What are you crying for?"

"Only because--because--it was just a memory. When I came away she was
singing, 'Loch Lomond.' The pathos of it! It always moves me so when she
sings that."

"And me, too. How heartbreakingly beautiful it is when some youthful
sorrow is brooding in her breast and she sings it for the mystic healing
it brings.... Aunt Hannah?"

"Dear Margaret?"

"I am very ill. Sometimes it comes over me that I shall never hear that
dear voice again."

"Oh, don't--don't, Margaret! I can't bear it!"

Margaret was moved and distressed, and said, gently:

"There--there--let me put my arms around you. Don't cry. There--put your
cheek to mine.