e
thoughts--excellent things in their way, without which the unlettered
world would become rude, sordid and narrow--faded into the background.
She forgot everything but the poor man passing through a mortal crisis,
with Annie able to succour him in his need, and his wife and children
waiting to hear whether the end were life or death.

May held her breath, and watched, prayed, and waited in her turn, with
no thought left for the news she had brought to town, and was to carry
to Redcross. What did it signify if only the poor man lived when May
herself was well and strong, and all her dear friends were in health,
and likely to be spared to her.

When Annie came in again with a cheerful face, and said, "He has stood
it wonderfully; there is every prospect of his making a speedy
recovery," May's face too cleared till for the moment it was almost
radiant. She acquiesced, with responsive animation, in Annie's
arrangement that since she, Annie, had got leave of absence for the
rest of the day she would put on her walking-dress, and she and May
too would go and pick up Rose at Mr. St. Foy's class-rooms; and what
was to hinder all the three from having an expedition together in the
fine summer weather to Hampton Court, or Kew, or the Crystal Palace,
thus celebrating May's visit to town, and making the most of Annie's
holiday? It would be like dear old times of primrose hunting, blue-bell
gathering, maying, and nutting down at Redcross before the cares and
troubles of the world had taken hold of the girls. Annie had already
sent on May's luggage to Welby Square, to which May would return with
Rose. Annie excluded herself carefully from this part of the programme,
with a kind of unapproachable haughtiness which had three strains of
stubbornness and one strain of fiery youthful anger in its composition,
while it was a complete enigma to May. But all she cared to know was
that she was going with her own two sisters for an entire afternoon's
delightful excursion. In the morning she had felt that she could never
have the heart to be happy again. Even yet she would not be quite happy;
she would be very much affronted when she was telling Annie and Rose the
particulars of her, May's, silliness and selfishness; how she had given
herself up to moping, and then how she had played herself--first with
the St. Ambrose gaieties, and later with the Greek play, instead of
setting about her work methodically and diligently. Annie would,
perhaps