, and saves and lays up every
cent. I believe she wears the same black gown now for best which she
wore thirteen years ago to her father's funeral. He was a queer one too;
crazy, some said, and I guess 'twas true. He took a fancy to stay in one
room all the time and would not let anybody in but Hanner, and now he is
dead she keeps that room shet up and locked, some say. I was at the
funeral, and Grey, who was a boy, took on awful, and hung over the
coffin ever so long. He was sick with fever after it, and everybody
thought he'd die. He was crazy as a loon. I watched with him one night
and he talked every thing you could think of, about a grave hid away
somewhere--under his bed, he seemed to think--and made me go down on all
fours to look for it. I suppose he was thinking of his grandfather so
lately buried. And then, he kept talking about _Bessie_ and asking why
she did not come."

"Bessie! Me!" the young girl exclaimed, with crimson cheeks, and Mrs.
Browne replied:

"No; 'taint likely it was you; and yet, let me see! Yes, well, I
declare; I remember now that his Aunt Lucy, who sat up with me, told me
it was a little girl they had talked about before him, a grandniece of
Miss Betsey McPherson. Yes, that was you, sure! Isn't it droll, though?"

Bessie did not reply, but in her heart there was a strange feeling as
she thought that before she had ever heard of Grey Jerrold, he had been
interested in and talked of her in his delirium and in his fevered
dreams.

Soon after this, Mrs. Browne arose to go, and said good-by to Bessie,
whom she did not expect to see again, as they were to leave on the
morrow for Chester, where her husband and son were to meet them. It was
Daisy's last day at home, and though she had been away many times for a
longer period than it was now her intention to stay, this going was
different, for the broad sea she was to cross would put an immense
distance between her and her husband and child, and she was unusually
quiet and gentle and affectionate, telling Bessie, who seemed greatly
depressed, that the summer would pass quickly and she should be back to
stay for good until the invalid was better or worse.

The next morning when she went to say good-by to her husband he welcomed
her with a smile, and with something of his old, courteous manner put
out his hand to greet her. She took it between her own, and raising it
to her lips, knelt beside him, and laying her head against his arm, said
to him