if he were saying something that
would be very grateful) he told me what I knew already, and I listened
with my head down and my face towards the fire.

He must have been disappointed at the sad way I received his news, for
he proceeded to talk of my general health; saying the great thing in
such a case as mine was to be cheerful, to keep a good heart, and to
look hopefully to the future.

"You must have pleasant surroundings and the society of agreeable
people--old friends, old schoolfellows, familiar and happy faces."

I said "Yes" and "Yes," knowing only too well how impossible it all was;
and then his talk turned on general topics--my father, whose condition
made his face very grave, and then his wife, Christian Ann, whose name
caused his gentle old eyes to gleam with sunshine.

She had charged him with a message to me.

"Tell her," she had said, "I shall never forget what she did for me in
the autumn, and whiles and whiles I'm thanking God for her."

That cut me to the quick, but I was nearly torn to pieces by what came
next.

"Christian Ann told me to say too that Sunny Lodge is longing for you.
'She's a great lady now,' said she, 'but maybe great ladies have their
troubles same as ourselves, poor things, and if she ever wants to rest
her sweet head in a poor woman's bed, Mary O'Neill's little room is
always waiting for her.'"

"God bless her!" I said--it was all I _could_ say--and then, to my great
relief, he talked on other subjects.

The one thing I was afraid of was that he might speak of Martin. Heaven
alone, which looks into the deep places of a woman's heart in her hour
of sorest trial, knows why I was in such dread that he might do so, but
sure I am that if he had mentioned Martin at that moment I should have
screamed.

When he rose to go he repeated his warnings.

"You'll remember what I said about being bright and cheerful?"

"I'll try."

"And keeping happy and agreeable faces about you?"

"Ye-s."

Hardly had he left the room when Alma came sweeping into it, full of I
her warmest and insincerest congratulations.

"There!" she cried, with all the bitter honey of her tongue. "Wasn't I
right in sending for the doctor? Such news, too! Oh, happy, happy you!
But I must not keep you now, dearest. You'll be just crazy to write to
your husband and tell him all about it."

Alma's mother was the next to visit me. The comfortable old soul,
redolent of perfume and glittering with diamonds, bega