o get back. And yet--like us
all, when we swoon--like us all, every day of our lives when we wake--he
is instinctively unwilling to be restored to the consciousness of this
existence, and would be left dormant, if he could.

Bob Gliddery returns with Pleasant Riderhood, who was out when sought
for, and hard to find. She has a shawl over her head, and her first
action, when she takes it off weeping, and curtseys to Miss Abbey, is to
wind her hair up.

'Thank you, Miss Abbey, for having father here.'

'I am bound to say, girl, I didn't know who it was,' returns Miss Abbey;
'but I hope it would have been pretty much the same if I had known.'

Poor Pleasant, fortified with a sip of brandy, is ushered into the
first-floor chamber. She could not express much sentiment about her
father if she were called upon to pronounce his funeral oration, but she
has a greater tenderness for him than he ever had for her, and crying
bitterly when she sees him stretched unconscious, asks the doctor, with
clasped hands: 'Is there no hope, sir? O poor father! Is poor father
dead?'

To which the doctor, on one knee beside the body, busy and watchful,
only rejoins without looking round: 'Now, my girl, unless you have the
self-command to be perfectly quiet, I cannot allow you to remain in the
room.'

Pleasant, consequently, wipes her eyes with her back-hair, which is in
fresh need of being wound up, and having got it out of the way, watches
with terrified interest all that goes on. Her natural woman's aptitude
soon renders her able to give a little help. Anticipating the doctor's
want of this or that, she quietly has it ready for him, and so by
degrees is intrusted with the charge of supporting her father's head
upon her arm.

It is something so new to Pleasant to see her father an object of
sympathy and interest, to find any one very willing to tolerate his
society in this world, not to say pressingly and soothingly entreating
him to belong to it, that it gives her a sensation she never experienced
before. Some hazy idea that if affairs could remain thus for a long time
it would be a respectable change, floats in her mind. Also some vague
idea that the old evil is drowned out of him, and that if he should
happily come back to resume his occupation of the empty form that lies
upon the bed, his spirit will be altered. In which state of mind she
kisses the stony lips, and quite believes that the impassive hand she
chafes will revive a tend