wl about the living morsel that was all the world
to her.

"Well, upon my word," said Joe, "I think, Matabel, you've grown
prettier than ever, and if Bideabout bain't a happy man, he's
different constituted from most of us."

Joe might well express his admiration. The young mother was
singularly lovely now, with sufficient of the delicacy of her
late confinement still on her, and with the glow of love and pride
glorifying her face.

She was very pleased to go to the Ship, not so much because she
wanted to see the hostess, as because she desired to show her the
babe.

"How is mother?" she asked of Joe Filmer.

The ostler shook his head.

"I should say she hain't long to live. She changed terrible last
week. If it weren't for her stories about Gilly Cheel, and one or
another, one wouldn't believe it was the same woman. And the master,
he is that composed over it all--it is wonderful, wonderful."

Mehetabel was shocked. She was not prepared for this news, and the
brightness went out of her face. She was even more alarmed and
troubled when she saw Mrs. Verstage, on whose countenance the
shadow of approaching death was plainly lying.

But the hostess had lost none of the energy and directness of her
character.

"My dear Matabel," she said, "it's no use you wishin' an' hopin'.
Wishin' an' hopin' never made puff paste without lard. I haven't
got in me the one thing which could raise me up again--the power
to shake off my complaint. That is gone from me. I thought for
long I could fight it, and by not givin' way tire it out. You can
do that with a stubborn horse, but not with a complaint such as
mine. But there--no more about me, show me the young Broom-Squire."

After the usual scene incident on the exhibition of a babe that is
its mother's pride, a scene that every woman can fill in for
herself, and which every man would ask to be excused to witness,
Mrs. Verstage said: "Matabel, let there be no disguise between us.
How do you and your husband stand to each other now?"

"I would rather you did not ask me," was the young wife's answer,
after some hesitation.

"That tells me all," said the hostess. "I did hope that the birth
of a little son or daughter would have made all right, assisted by
the cookery book, but I see plainly that it has not. I have heard
some sort of talks about it. Matabel, now that I stand, not with
one, but with two feet on the brink of my grave, I view matters in
a very different light fr