room. It was a relief to her when Dora Millar,
looking as if she had been sitting up in turn with every patient in the
ward, as pale as a moonbeam and as weak as water, yet shook her head
decisively against any suggestion of her retiring to rest.

There was a strong contrast between the couple who were to wait together
for death or the morning. Miss Franklin herself might be on the eve of
dying--but so long as she lived and went through the mundane process of
dressing, she must dress exceedingly well. She was a good, kind woman
all the same, and this night she bore a sore heart under her carefully
contrived and nicely put on garments.

Poor young Dora, on the contrary, looked all limp and forlorn. The
gingham morning-gown she had not changed was huddled on her, and
crumpled about her. Her neglected hair was pushed back from her little
white face. Annie in her nurse's spotless apron and cap looked a
hundred times trimmer, and was altogether a more cheerful object. It was
as if the whole world had come to an end for Dora, and she had ceased to
notice trifles. Almost the first words Miss Franklin had said to her
when the visitor began to recover from the shock she had undergone,
were--

"Excuse me, Miss Dora, the lace at your throat is coming undone--let me
put it right for you; and an end of your hair has fallen down. I may
fasten it up, may I not?"

A delicate, exhausted girl was no great support for a woman under the
circumstances, still she was better than nobody. She was company in
one form, like the domestic cat, when no more available associate is
to be found. Besides, in the middle of their dissimilarity, Miss
Franklin had a natural liking for Dora Millar, and had always excepted
her from the grudge which the elder woman was inclined to feel against
one member of the Millar family. "A nice, well-meaning, gentle girl,"
Miss Franklin mentally classed Dora. "The most quiet and ladylike of
them all." She was a great improvement, in Miss Franklin's estimation,
on that too bright and restless Annie, whom everybody cried up as a
beauty. She had found, Miss Franklin was creditably informed, a fine
vent for her dictatorial imperious temper as a nurse. Yet she, Miss
Franklin, ought not to find fault with Annie Millar at this time, when
Dr. Capes had said her treatment of the fever patients, with dear Tom
among them, was admirable; though, by one of the mysterious decrees of
Providence, she might not be permitted to succ