epare a place for you_.

Whether the words were spoken, or whether she read them as in a book, or
whether it was only a remembrance of what she knew to be true, she could
not tell, but it brought peace ineffable.

She woke at the touch of the nurse, with a start and a sigh of
disappointment. But there was more than patience in the smile with
which she answered her kind chiding; and the woman, looking in her face,
kept silent, feeling vaguely that words of encouragement, such as she
spoke often, as mere words of course, to patients under her care, were
not needed here.

So when Christie rose to a new day in this strange, sad place of
suffering, it was with an earnest desire to be contented and hopeful
during the few weeks she expected to spend in it. It was by no means so
difficult a matter as she at first supposed. She was not confined to
her room, but was permitted at stated times to go with the nurse into
the public wards; and though the sights she saw there saddened her many
a time, she was happy in having an opportunity of now and then doing a
kindness to some poor sufferer among them. Sometimes it was to read a
chapter in the Bible, or a page or two in some book left by a visitor;
sometimes she had the courage to speak a word in season to the weary;
once or twice she wrote a letter for some patient who could not write
for herself. All this did her good; and the sight she had of the
sufferings of others did; much to make her patient in bearing her own.

Then, too, she could work; and Mrs Seaton had kindly supplied her with
some of the pretty materials for fancy work which Effie and Gertrude had
taught her. In this way many an hour, which would otherwise have been
very tedious, passed away pleasantly and even quickly. She had books
too; and once, during the first month of her stay, Mrs Seaton visited
her, and several times proved her kind remembrance of her by sending her
some little gift--as a bunch of flowers, a book, or some little delicacy
to tempt her variable appetite. Martha came almost every Sabbath, and
from her she heard of the little lads and sometimes of Miss Gertrude.
So the first few weeks passed far more pleasantly and rapidly than she
had thought possible.

When the doctor decided that she must not wait to hear from her sister
before placing herself under surgical care in the hospital, Christie
intended to write immediately to tell her of her changed prospects, but
when she thought about