-I never saw her. I hear her sometimes, but I don't understand
what she says.--Hush! come here!" and she stole to the window on tiptoe.
Gawtrey followed and looked out.

"Do you hear her, now?" said Fanny. "What does she say?"

As the girl spoke, some bird among the evergreens uttered a shrill,
plaintive cry, rather than song--a sound which the thrush occasionally
makes in the winter, and which seems to express something of fear, and
pain, and impatience. "What does she say?--can you tell me?" asked the
child.

"Pooh! that is a bird; why do you call it your sister?"

"I don't know!--because it is--because it--because--I don't know--is it
not in pain?--do something for it, papa!"

Gawtrey glanced at Morton, whose face betokened his deep pity, and
creeping up to him, whispered,--

"Do you think she is really touched here? No, no,--she will outgrow
it--I am sure she will!"

Morton sighed.

Fanny by this time had again seated herself in the middle of the floor,
and arranged her toys, but without seeming to take pleasure in them.

At last Gawtrey was obliged to depart. The lay sister, who had charge
of Fanny, was summoned into the parlour; and then the child's manner
entirely changed; her face grew purple--she sobbed with as much anger as
grief. "She would not leave papa--she would not go--that she would not!"

"It is always so," whispered Gawtrey to Morton, in an abashed and
apologetic voice. "It is so difficult to get away from her. Just go and
talk with her while I steal out."

Morton went to her, as she struggled with the patient good-natured
sister, and began to soothe and caress her, till she turned on him her
large humid eyes, and said, mournfully,

"Tu es mechant, tu. Poor Fanny!"

"But this pretty doll--" began the sister. The child looked at it
joylessly.

"And papa is going to die!"

"Whenever Monsieur goes," whispered the nun, "she always says that he
is dead, and cries herself quietly to sleep; when Monsieur returns, she
says he is come to life again. Some one, I suppose, once talked to her
about death; and she thinks when she loses sight of any one, that that
is death."

"Poor child!" said Morton, with a trembling voice.

The child looked up, smiled, stroked his cheek with her little hand, and
said:

"Thank you!--Yes! poor Fanny! Ah, he is going--see!--let me go too--tu
es mechant."

"But," said Morton, detaining her gently, "do you know that you give
him pain?--you make him cry by sho