a sigh, "and I have but a
dollar put by toward the twelve. I shall have to send you round to see
Mr. Bond, child, and it's me that's ashamed to do that after all he's
done for us; but it can't be helped! It's unfortunate we've been the
last month, and shure he'll not be blaming the Providence as brought it
to us!"

So Nannie put on her old hood and cloak, and went timidly up to Mrs.
Kinalden's door. The old lady's aspect was rather forbidding, as she
answered the bell, and found only a beggar child had summoned her from
her dinner-pot, and she was about to slam the door in her face, when
Nannie said,

"It's Mr. Bond I'm wanting to see, ma'am, if you please."

Mrs. Kinalden would have been glad to send the child away; but she
remembered the past, and dared not venture; so she told her to be sure
and wipe her feet clean, and then she ushered her up stairs to the
bachelor's-room. Nannie knocked softly, and as she heard a faint voice
say "Come in," she opened the door and entered. One glance revealed it
all. Mr. Bond had been sick--very ill--and she had never once been to
inquire about him. He sat propped up in his easy-chair, with a flowered
dressing-gown about him, and his head against a pillow, and there was a
warm fire in the fire-place, and bowls standing about with bread-water,
and gruel, and arrow-root in them--and labeled vials were upon the
table, so that she felt he had really been in some danger. Besides, his
face was thin and pale and wrinkled, and she would scarcely have
recognized him as the fat jolly old man who used to have hardly a lap
for little Winnie to perch upon.

"Oh! it's you, Nannie, is it?" said he, with the same pleasant tone as
of old, and with one of his broad, beaming smiles that played over his
hollow cheeks mockingly. "Didn't come to see your old friend all these
three weeks, and he too ill to get off from his bed. He wouldn't have
served you so, Nannie, that he wouldn't!" and he looked half
reproachfully, half jestingly at the serious face of the young girl.

"And we were all the time wondering if ye'd deserted us, sir," said
Nannie, as she stood by the table twisting her apron over her finger;
"and never a word of your illness did we hear, or the days would not
have slipped away and we not have been to ye! Maybe ye were needing
somebody to nurse ye, and ye lying alone here with no hand to give the
medicines?" and she looked inquiringly at him.

"Mrs. Kinalden has been as attentive as