Dr. Buck has sent us an excellent English nurse;
she came yesterday and insisted on sitting up with M. all night and we
all _dropped_ into our beds like so many shot birds. I heard her go down
for ice three times, so I knew my precious lamb was not neglected, and
slept in peace. We are encompassed with mercies; the physician who
drives over from Manchester is as skilful as he is conscientious; this
house is admirably adapted to sickness, the stairway only nine feet
high, plenty of water, and my room, which I have given her, admits of
her lying in a draught as the doctor wishes her to do. While the nurse
is sleeping, as she is now, A. and I take turns sitting out on the
piazza, where there is a delicious breeze almost always blowing.

The ladies here are disappointed that I can no longer hold the Bible-
readings, but it is not so much matter that I am put off work if you are
put on it; the field is one, and the Master knows whom to use and when
and where. We have been reading with great delight a little book called
"Miracles of Faith." I am called to M., who has had a slight chill, and
of course high fever after it. It seems painfully unnatural to see my
sunbeam turned into a dark cloud, and it distresses me so to see her
suffer that I don't know how I am going to stand it. But I won't plague
you with any more of this, nor must I forget how often I have said, "Thy
will be done." You need not doubt that God's will looks so much better
to us than our own, that nothing would tempt us to decide our child's
future.

_To her eldest Son, Dorset, Sept. 19, 1875._

Your letters are a great comfort to us, and the way to get many is to
write many. M.'s fever ran twenty-one days, as the doctor said it would,
and began to break yesterday. On Friday it ran very high; her pulse was
120 and her temperature 105--bad, bad, bad. She is very, very weak. We
have sent away Pharaoh and the kitten; Pha _would_ bark, and Kit _would_
come in and stare at her, and both made her cry. The doctor has the
house kept still as the grave; he even brought over his slippers lest
his step should disturb her. She is not yet out of danger; so you must
not be too elated. We four are sitting in the dining-room with a hot
fire; papa is reading aloud to A. and H.; it is evening, and M. has had
her opiate, and is getting to sleep. I have not much material of which
to make letters, sitting all day in a dark room in almost total silence.
The artists are rigging up