rs had been obeyed and the money paid, and so
Bessie's letter was put aside and forgotten, for weeks and even months,
when an incident occurred which brought it to their minds and it was
forwarded to Miss McPherson.

CHAPTER XVI.

FROM MARCH TO JUNE.

When Bessie knew that the money was really theirs, when she had it in
her hand and counted the bank-notes, her happiness knew no bounds, and
she felt richer than Blanche Trevellian ever had with fifty times that
sum. To her that hundred pounds represented so much actual good and
comfort for her father, for whom she would use nearly all of it. But
first she must pay Jack Trevellian, and she said to her father:

"May I have ten pounds of this to do with as I like? I promise to make
good use of it."

"Yes, child," he answered, "it is all yours to do with as you please."

So she sent ten pounds to Jack, and wrote:

"I return the money you were so good as to loan mother. Ten pounds
she said it was. It was very kind in you to let her have it, and I
know you meant it well. You could not mean otherwise; but please,
Mr. Trevellian, for my sake don't do it again.

"Yours truly,

"BESSIE McPHERSON."

This done, Bessie paid the butcher and the baker and the grocer, and a
part of what they were owing Anthony and Dorothy, and bought herself a
pair of shoes, and then religiously put by what was left to buy the
medicines and dainties, the beef tea and wine and jellies and fruit,
which were to nurse her father back to health physically and mentally.
But it would take more than fruit or jelly to repair a constitution
never strong and now greatly weakened by disease. Every day Archie grew
weaker, while Bessie watched over and tended him with anguish in her
heart and a terrible shrinking from the future when he would be gone
forever. From Neil she heard often, but his letters did not do her much
good they were so full of regret for the poverty which was keeping her
from him and would keep her indefinitely for aught he knew. From her
mother she seldom heard. That frivolous butterfly was too busy and gay
to give much time or thought to her dying husband and overburdened
child. She was still at Nice and still devoted to her American friends,
the Rossiter-Brownes, as they called themselves, to the great amusement
of their neighbors, who had known them when they were plain Mr. and Mrs.
Isaac R. Brown, of Massachusetts, or, as they were familiarly called,