h.

"This month it will be eleven years since I was born, will it not,
father?"

"Yes, my darling."

"What a long time! Then, when my little sister is as old as I am, I
shall be--that is, I should have been--a woman grown. Fancy me twenty
years old, as tall as mother, wearing a gown like her, talking and
ordering, and busy about the house. How funny!" and she laughed again.
"Oh! no, father, I couldn't do it. I had better remain always your
little Muriel, weak and small, who liked to creep close to you, and go
to sleep in this way."

She ceased talking--very soon she was sound asleep. But--the father!

Muriel faded, though slowly. Sometimes she was so well for an hour or
two that the Hand seemed drawn back into the clouds, till of a sudden
again we discerned it there.

One Sunday--it was ten days or so after Maud's birth, and the weather
had been so bitterly cold that the mother had herself forbidden our
bringing Muriel to the other side of the house where she and the baby
lay--Mrs. Tod was laying the dinner, and John stood at the window
playing with his three boys.

He turned abruptly, and saw all the chairs placed round the table--all
save one.

"Where is Muriel's chair, Mrs. Tod?"

"Sir, she says she feels so tired like, she'd rather not come down
to-day," answered Mrs. Tod, hesitatingly.

"Not come down?"

"Maybe better not, Mr. Halifax. Look out at the snow. It'll be warmer
for the dear child to-morrow."

"You are right. Yes, I had forgotten the snow. She shall come down
to-morrow."

I caught Mrs. Tod's eyes; they were running over. She was too wise to
speak of it--but she knew the truth as well as we.

This Sunday--I remember it well--was the first day we sat down to
dinner with the one place vacant.

For a few days longer, her father, every evening when he came in from
the mills, persisted in carrying her down, as he had said, holding her
on his knee during tea, then amusing her and letting the boys amuse her
for half-an-hour or so before bed-time. But at the week's end even
this ceased.

When Mrs. Halifax, quite convalescent, was brought triumphantly to her
old place at our happy Sunday dinner-table, and all the boys came
pressing about her, vying which should get most kisses from little
sister Maud--she looked round, surprised amidst her smiling, and asked:

"Where is Muriel?"

"She seems to feel this bitter weather a good deal," John said; "and I
thought it better she shoul