n will give me
some luncheon, and then I have two or three visits to pay for David; he
is worrying himself dreadfully about that cobbler's child."

"Ah, poor little Kit," observed Elizabeth sadly; "how sorry Mr. Herrick
will be--Kit is his special protegee. But Dr. Randolph says that she
could never have lived to grow up. Her stepmother is nursing her
devotedly; but it is so sad to see Caleb Martin: he is quite bound up
in the child, and it seems no use to try and comfort him. 'Ay, it is
the Lord's will,' he said to me yesterday, 'and maybe Kit will have a
fine time when the angels make much of her; but what will Ma'am and I
do without her--that is what I want to know?'"

"To be sure--to be sure," returned Mr. Carlyon hurriedly, "that is what
we all want to know. Well, Elizabeth, you will do your best to make my
boy hear reason? Theo and I have failed, and this is our last chance."

"I will do what I can," replied Elizabeth dejectedly; "but David is a
difficult patient, and I very much fear that even I shall have little
influence with him. It is so strange," she continued sorrowfully, "that
with all his unselfishness he should think so little of our feelings in
this."

"Oh, you must make allowances for the morbidness of disease," returned
Mr. Carlyon, shaking his head. "Sick people have their fancies. You
must not lose heart, my dear,--remember you are my chief comfort as
well as David's." Then again she tried to smile. The next minute they
came in sight of the White Cottage, and Mr. Carlyon left her to fulfil
his self-imposed duties.

Elizabeth was right when she confessed that David Carlyon was a
difficult patient, for his high spirit and energy had prevented him for
a long time from owning he was ill.

Even in the early days of their engagement there had been symptoms that
ought not to have been neglected; but he had fought his languor and
fever manfully, and even Elizabeth knew nothing of an alarming attack
of faintness that had followed an unusually hard day's work.

Afterwards he had taken cold, and his illness had been so sharp that
Elizabeth in desperation had summoned his sister; but even then David
had absolutely refused any further medical advice, and had also
resisted all his friends' entreaties that he would be moved to the
vicarage or the Wood House to be properly nursed. "His old diggings
were good enough for the likes of him," he would say, "and though
Mother Pratt had her failings, she was not a