ot
at this time numerous, and the poor mother had enough to do with
her family downstairs. No nurse had been hired for the sick man,
for nurses cannot be hired without money, and money with the Tom
Mackenzies was scarce. Our Miss Mackenzie would have hired a nurse,
but she thought it better to take the work entirely into her own
hands. She did so, and I think we may say that her brother did not
suffer by it. As she sat by his bedside, night after night, she
seemed to feel that she had fallen again into her proper place, and
she looked back upon the year she had spent at Littlebath almost with
dismay. Since her brother's death, three men had offered to marry
her, and there was a fourth from whom she had expected such an offer.
She looked upon all this with dismay, and told herself that she was
not fit to sail, under her own guidance, out in the broad sea, amidst
such rocks as those. Was not some humbly feminine employment, such as
that in which she was now engaged, better for her in all ways? Sad
as was the present occasion, did she not feel a satisfaction in what
she was doing, and an assurance that she was fit for her position?
Had she not always been ill at ease, and out of her element, while
striving at Littlebath to live the life of a lady of fortune? She
told herself that it was so, and that it would be better for her to
be a hard-working, dependent woman, doing some tedious duty day by
day, than to live a life of ease which prompted her to longings for
things unfitted to her.

She had brought a little writing-desk with her that she had carried
from Arundel Street to Littlebath, and this she had with her in the
sick man's bedroom. Sitting there through the long hours of night,
she would open this and read over and over again those remnants of
the rhymes written in her early days which she had kept when she made
her great bonfire. There had been quires of such verses, but she had
destroyed all but a few leaves before she started for Littlebath.
What were left, and were now read, were very sweet to her, and yet
she knew that they were wrong and meaningless. What business had such
a one as she to talk of the sphere's tune and the silvery moon, of
bright stars shining and hearts repining? She would not for worlds
have allowed any one to know what a fool she had been--either Mrs
Tom, or John Ball, or Mr Maguire, or Miss Todd. She would have been
covered with confusion if her rhymes had fallen into the hands of any
one