d a whispered word. "Yer father's all right, and a
rare good fisherman," she said; for in spite of the frequent unkindness
she experienced, Mrs. Coomber was very fond of her husband.

"Ah, he's a good fisherman, but he'd be all the better if he didn't have
so much of that bottle," grumbled Bob; "he thinks a deal more about that
than he does about us."

It was true enough what Bob said. If his father could not by any chance
get his bottle replenished, wife and children had a little respite from
their usual hard, driving life, and he was more civil to their only
neighbours, who were at the farm about half a mile off; but once the
bottle got filled again, he grew sullen and morose, or quarrelsome. He
had recently made himself very disagreeable to Farmer Hayes in one of
his irritable fits, a fact which suddenly recurred to his wife when she
heard of the sick child being brought home to her to nurse, but she
dared not mention it to her husband. When Coomber brought the child that
afternoon, he said, gaily: "Here's a present for yer from the sea,
mother; maybe she'll bring us good luck coming as she did."

"It 'ud be better luck if we'd picked up a boat," muttered Bob, who was
standing near.

"Why, she ain't such a baby as you said," exclaimed Mrs. Coomber, as she
unpinned the shawl in which she was wrapped; "she is about five."

"Five years old," repeated Coomber; "but she'd talk if she was as old as
that, and Dame Peters told me she'd just laid like a dead thing ever
since she'd been there."

"She's ill, that's what it is, poor little mite--ill and frightened out
of her senses;" and Mrs. Coomber gathered her in her arms, and kissed
the little white lips, and pressed her to her bosom, as only a tender
mother can, while the boys stood round in wondering silence, and Coomber
dashed a tear from his eye as he thought of the little daughter lying in
Fellness churchyard. But he was ashamed of the love that prompted this
feeling, and said hastily: "Now, mother, we mustn't begin by spoiling
her;" but then he turned away, and called Bob to go with him and look
after the boat.

For several days the child continued very ill--too ill to notice
anything, or to attempt to talk; but one day, when she was lying on Mrs.
Coomber's lap before the fire, the boys mutely looking at her as she
lay, she suddenly put up her little hands, and said in a feeble whisper,
"Dear faver Dod, tate tare o' daddy and mammy, and Tiny;" and then she
seem