st unusual
thing.

Two days later she went to Banbrigg, carrying the satisfactory news that
at last a sale of the Barnhill property had been negotiated. To Emily
this intelligence gave extreme relief; it restored her independence.
Having this subject to speak of made the meeting easier on both sides
than it could otherwise have been. Emily was restlessly anxious to take
upon herself the task of nursing her mother; with the maid to help her,
she declared herself able to bear all responsibilities, and persisted so
strongly that Mrs. Baxendale had no choice but to assent to the nurse
who had remained being withdrawn. She could understand the need of
activity which possessed the girl, but had grave fears of the result of
an undertaking so disproportioned to her strength.

'Will you promise me,' she said, 'to give it up and get help if you find
it is trying you excessively?'

'Yes,' Emily replied, 'I will promise that. But I know I shall be better
for the occupation.'

'And you will let me still come and see you frequently?'

'I should miss you very much if you ceased to,' was Emily's answer.

Both felt that a difficulty had been surmounted, though they looked at
it from different sides.

October passed, and the first half of November. Mrs. Hood had not risen
from her bed, and there seemed slight chance that she ever would; she
was sinking into hopeless imbecility. Emily's task in that sick-room was
one which a hospital nurse would have found it burdensome to support;
she bore it without a sign of weariness or of failure in physical
strength. Incessant companionship with bodily disease was the least
oppressive of her burdens; the state of her mother's mind afflicted her
far more. Occasionally the invalid would appear in full possession of
her intellect, and those were the hardest days; at such times she was
incessantly querulous; hours long she lay and poured forth complaints
and reproaches. When she could speak no more for very weariness, she
moaned and wept, till Emily also found it impossible to check the tears
which came of the extremity of her compassion. The girl was superhuman
in her patience; never did she speak a word which was not of perfect
gentleness; the bitterest misery seemed but to augment the tenderness of
her devotion. Scarcely was there an hour of the day or night that she
could claim for herself; whilst it was daylight she tended the sufferer
ceaselessly, and her bed was in the same room, so that