t was a tidy lot better
morning than last night, missis. He had breakfasted--yes--off of
corfy, and paid for it, and buttered 'arf slices and no stintin', for
twopence. Sally had a fellow-feeling for this boy's optimism. But he
had something on his mind, for when Sally asked him if Major Roper had
got home safe last night, his cheerfulness clouded over, and he said
first, "Couldn't say, missis;" and then, "He's been got home, you may
place your dependence on that;" adding, inexplicably to Sally, "He
won't care about this weather; it won't be no odds!" She couldn't wait
to find out his meaning, but told him he might go on clearing away
the snow, and when Mrs. Kindred came he was to say Miss Rosalind
Nightingale told him he might. She said she would be answerable, and
then ran to catch up Fenwick.

The nurse came out to meet them on the landing, and in answer to
Fenwick's half-inquiry or look of inquiry--Sally did not gather
which--said: "Yes--at least, I think so--just now." Sally made up her
mind it was death. But it was not, quite; for as the nurse, preceding
them, pushed the door of the sickroom gently open, the voice of the
man she believed dead came out almost strong and clear in the silence:
"Evil has turned to good. God be praised!"

But they were the last words Colonel Lund spoke. He died so quietly
that the exact moment of dissolution was not distinguishable. Fenwick
and Sally found Rosalind so overstrained with grief and watching that
they asked for no explanation of the words. Indeed, they may not have
ascribed any special meaning to them.

CHAPTER XXV

ABOUT SIX MONTHS, AND HOW A CABMAN SAW A GHOST. OF SALLY'S AND THE
DOCTOR'S "MODUS VIVENDI," AND THE SHOOSMITH FAMILY. HOW SALLY MADE TEA
FOR BUDDHA, AND HOW BUDDHA FORESAW A STEPDAUGHTER. DELIRIUM TREMENS

It may make this story easier to read at this point if we tell our
reader that this twenty-fifth chapter contains little of vital
import--is, in fact, only a passing reference to one or two
by-incidents that came about in the half-year that followed. He
cannot complain that they are superfluous if we give him fair warning
of their triviality, and enable him to skip them without remorse.
But they register, to our thinking, what little progress events made
in six very nice months--a period Time may be said to have skipped.
And whoso will may follow his example, and lose but little in the
doing of it.

Very nice months they were--only one cl