can still see the old Tramp House she is so fond of. Not a
house like this, with such big rooms, but a pretty, modern Queen Ann
house, with every room a corner room, and a bay-window in it. And Harold
will have an office in town, and I shall drive down for him every
afternoon and take him home to dinner and to Jerrie.'

Such was the nature of Maude's thoughts, as she lay day after day upon
the couch, too weak to do more thin lift her hands or rise her head
when the dreadful paroxysms of coughing seized her and racked her
fragile frame. Still she was very happy, and the happiness showed itself
upon her, where there rested a look of perfect content and peace, which
her father and mother had noticed and commented upon, and which Jerrie
saw the moment she entered the room and stood by Maude's side.

'Dear Maude,' she said, as she took the hot hands in hers and kissed
them tenderly.

Then she sat down beside her, and smoothed her hair, and told her how
lovely she looked in her pretty rose-colored wrapper, and how sorry
every one was for her, and that both she and Nina would have been there
every day, only they knew they could not see her. Then, as the great
black eyes fixed themselves steadily upon her, with a look of enquiry in
them, she set her teeth hard, and began:

'I don't think anyone has been more sorry than Harold. Why, for the
first few days after you were taken so ill he just walked the floor all
the time he was in the house, and when grandma asked what ailed him, he
said, "I am thinking of Maude, and am afraid my call upon her was the
cause of the attack."'

'N--n--,' Maude began, but checked herself in time, and taking up her
slate, wrote, 'Tell him it was not his call. I am glad he came.'

'Yes I will,' Jerrie replied, scarcely able to keep back her tears, when
she saw how cramped and irregular the handwriting was, so unlike
Maude's, and realized more and more how weak and sick was the little
girl whose eyes followed her everywhere and always grew brighter and
softer when she was talking to her of Harold.

All day and all night Jerrie sat by her, sometimes talking to her and
answering the questions she wrote upon the slate, but oftener in perfect
silence, when Maude seemed to be asleep. Then Jerrie's tears fell like
rain, the face upon the pillow looked so much like death, and she kept
repeating to herself the lines:

'We thought her dying when she slept.
And sleeping when she died.'

When the w