.

I seem as if I could not speak without broad smiles. I am tired, indeed,
still, and my eyes are heavy. But what does that matter? Life has won!
Life has won! We are still all six here!

"Nancy!" says the Brat, regarding me with an eye of friendly criticism,
"I think you are _cracked_ to-night!--Do you remember what our nurses
used to tell us? 'Much laughing always ends in much crying.'"

But I do not heed: I laugh on. Barbara is not nearly so boisterously
merry as I, but then she never is. She is more overdone with fatigue
than I, I think; for she speaks little--though what she does say is full
of content and gladness--and there are dark streaks of weariness and
watching under the serene violets of her eyes. She is certainly very
tired; as we go to bed at night she seems hardly able to get up the
stairs, but leans heavily on the banisters--one who usually runs so
lightly up and down.

Yes, _very_ tired, but what of that? it would be unnatural, _most_
unnatural if she were not; she will be all right to-morrow, after a good
long night's rest--yes, all right. I say this to her, still gayly
laughing as I give her my last kiss, and she smiles and echoes, "All
right!"

CHAPTER XLIX.

"So mayst thou die, as I do; fear and pain
Being subdued. Farewell! Farewell! Farewell!"

All right! Yes, for Barbara it _is_ all right. Friends, I no more doubt
that than I doubt that I am sitting here now, with the hot tears on my
cheeks, telling you about it; but oh! not--_not_ for us!

"Much laughing will end in much crying." The Brat was right. God knows
the old saw has come true enough in my case. I exulted too soon. Too
soon I said that the all-victor was vanquished. He might have left us
our one little victory, might not he?--knowing that at best it was but a
reprieve, that soon or late--soon or late, Algy--we all, every human
flower that ever blossomed out in this world's sad garden, must be
embraced in the icy iron of his arms.

I always said that we were too many and too prosperous; long ago I said
it. I always wondered that he had so long overlooked us. And now that he
comes, he takes our choicest and best. With nothing less is he content.
Barbara sickens. Not until the need for her tender nursing is ended, not
until Algy can do without her, does she go; and then she makes haste to
leave us.

On the morning after my mad and premature elation, it is but too plain
that the fever has laid hold of her too,