fatherless child, with an unction as if she liked
the excitement of the sorrowful story.

So passed away the first days of Alice's widowhood. By and by things
subsided into their natural and tranquil course. But, as if the young
creature was always to be in some heavy trouble, her ewe-lamb began to
be ailing, pining, and sickly. The child's mysterious illness turned
out to be some affection of the spine, likely to affect health but not
to shorten life--at least, so the doctors said. But the long, dreary
suffering of one whom a mother loves as Alice loved her only child,
is hard to look forward to. Only Norah guessed what Alice suffered; no
one but God knew.

And so it fell out, that when Mrs Wilson, the elder, came to her one
day, in violent distress, occasioned by a very material diminution in
the value of the property that her husband had left her--a diminution
which made her income barely enough to support herself, much less
Alice--the latter could hardly understand how anything which did not
touch health or life could cause such grief; and she received the
intelligence with irritating composure. But when, that afternoon, the
little sick child was brought in, and the grandmother--who, after all,
loved it well--began a fresh moan over her losses to its unconscious
ears--saying how she had planned to consult this or that doctor, and
to give it this or that comfort or luxury in after years, but that now
all chance of this had passed away--Alice's heart was touched, and she
drew near to Mrs Wilson with unwonted caresses, and, in a spirit not
unlike to that of Ruth, entreated that, come what would, they might
remain together. After much discussion in succeeding days, it was
arranged that Mrs Wilson should take a house in Manchester, furnishing
it partly with what furniture she had, and providing the rest with
Alice's remaining two hundred pounds. Mrs Wilson was herself a
Manchester woman, and naturally longed to return to her native town;
some connexions of her own, too, at that time required lodgings, for
which they were willing to pay pretty handsomely. Alice undertook
the active superintendence and superior work of the household;
Norah--willing, faithful Norah--offered to cook, scour, do anything in
short, so that she might but remain with them.

The plan succeeded. For some years their first lodgers remained with
them, and all went smoothly--with that one sad exception of the little
girl's increasing deformity. Ho