was easy to read in the sweet face beside him but he could not help
telling himself that it was but too plain; and he groaned in his heart
as he thought of that which he had determined to say.

"Hark, listen!" cried the girl, as a lark rose from the corn close by.
"Isn't it beautiful? How different to those poor caged things in our
street. Look, too, at the green there--four, five, twenty different
tints upon those trees. Oh, you are losing half the beauties of those
banks! Look at them, scarlet with poppies! There, too, the crimson
valerian. How beautiful the foxgloves are! Why, there's a white one.
Who'd ever think that London could be so near!"

She stopped, panting, and held her hand to her side.

"You are tired?" he said, anxiously.

"Oh no," she said, darting a grateful look in return for his
sympathy--"it is nothing. I feel as if I should like to set off and
run, but I think sometimes I am not so strong as I used to be. Mamma
says I have outgrown my strength; but it is my cough."

She said these last words plaintively, and there was a sad, pinched look
in her face as she gazed up at him; but it lit up again directly as she
met his eager, earnest eyes fixed upon her, and her trembling little
hand stole farther through his arm.

"That's right," he said, patting it--"lean on me. I'm big and strong."

"May I?" she said, softly.

"To be sure," he answered.

"It's very kind of you," she whispered, "and I like it. I go out so
little, and yet I long to; and if I don't stay here long, I shall have
seen so little of the world."

"Netta, my child," he exclaimed, "what are you saying?"

The girl's other hand was laid upon his arm, as they stood beneath a
shady tree, and she looked up at him in a dreamy way.

"I think sometimes," she said, slowly, "that I shall not be here long.
It's my cough, I suppose. It's so pleasant to feel, though, that
people--some one cares for me; only it makes me feel that I shall not
want to go."

"Come, come, this is nonsense," he said, cheerily. "Why, you're not an
invalid."

"I should be, I think, if we were rich," she said, sadly. "But let's go
on along by that high sand bank, where the flowers are growing; and here
is a wood all deep shades of green."

"But you will be tired?"

"No, no; you said I might rest on you. I should not be weak if I could
live out here, and dear mamma were not compelled to work. Poor mamma!"

They walked on in silence, and she lean