lling to his work. 'Not to me.'

Florence could feel--who better?--how truly he spoke. She drew a little
closer to him, and would have been glad to touch his rugged hand, and
thank him for his goodness to the miserable object that he looked upon
with eyes so different from any other man's.

'Who would favour my poor girl--to call it favouring--if I didn't?' said
the father.

'Ay, ay,' cried the neighbour. 'In reason, John. But you! You rob
yourself to give to her. You bind yourself hand and foot on her account.
You make your life miserable along of her. And what does she care! You
don't believe she knows it?'

The father lifted up his head again, and whistled to her. Martha made
the same impatient gesture with her crouching shoulders, in reply; and
he was glad and happy.

'Only for that, Miss,' said the neighbour, with a smile, in which there
was more of secret sympathy than he expressed; 'only to get that, he
never lets her out of his sight!'

'Because the day'll come, and has been coming a long while,' observed
the other, bending low over his work, 'when to get half as much from
that unfort'nate child of mine--to get the trembling of a finger, or the
waving of a hair--would be to raise the dead.'

Florence softly put some money near his hand on the old boat, and left
him.

And now Florence began to think, if she were to fall ill, if she were to
fade like her dear brother, would he then know that she had loved him;
would she then grow dear to him; would he come to her bedside, when she
was weak and dim of sight, and take her into his embrace, and cancel all
the past? Would he so forgive her, in that changed condition, for not
having been able to lay open her childish heart to him, as to make it
easy to relate with what emotions she had gone out of his room that
night; what she had meant to say if she had had the courage; and how she
had endeavoured, afterwards, to learn the way she never knew in infancy?

Yes, she thought if she were dying, he would relent. She thought, that
if she lay, serene and not unwilling to depart, upon the bed that was
curtained round with recollections of their darling boy, he would be
touched home, and would say, 'Dear Florence, live for me, and we will
love each other as we might have done, and be as happy as we might have
been these many years!' She thought that if she heard such words from
him, and had her arms clasped round him' she could answer with a smile,
'It is too late fo