repeated the name several times, as if to recall it.

"Mrs Elder!--I had lost sight of her this long time. Yes, certainly I
will go. Where does she live now?"

The servant replied that the child who brought the message was waiting
to show him the way; and in a few minutes he was ready to go with her.
Lilias, who was standing at the door, started homeward as soon as he
appeared, and hurried on almost as rapidly as she came, so that the
doctor had some difficulty in keeping her in sight.

"Are you sure you are not mistaking the way?" said he, as Lilias waited
for him at the corner of the street, or rather the alley that led to the
attic; "surely Mrs Elder cannot be living in a place like this?"

Lilias threw back her bonnet, and now, for the first time, looked in the
doctor's face. "Yes, sir, we have lived here ever since the time you
used to come and see Archie."

"Oh, he! my Lily of the valley, this is you, is it? Well, don't cry,"
he added; for his kindly voice had brought the tears to the child's
eyes. "We shall have your mother quite well in a day or two again,
never fear."

But he looked grave indeed as he stood beside her, and took her burning
hand in his.

"You don't think my mother will be long ill?" said Lilias, looking up
anxiously into his face as he stood beside the bed.

"No, my child; I don't think she will be long ill," said he, gravely.

And Lilias, reassured by his words, and fearing no evil, smiled almost
brightly again, as she went quietly about her household work.

"You think her dying, then?" said Mrs Blair, to whom his words conveyed
a far different meaning.

"She is not dying yet; but, should her present symptoms continue long,
she cannot possibly survive. She must have been exerting herself far
beyond her strength or living long without nourishing food, to have
become reduced to a state so frightfully low as that in which I find
her."

"She has been doing both, I fear," said her sister, sadly. "She has
sacrificed herself. And, yet, what could she do? They have had nothing
for many months between them and want, but the labour of her hands, and
the few pence that poor child could earn. God help them!"

"God help them, indeed!" echoed the doctor earnestly.

He gave her what hope he could. He said it was possible, only just
possible, that she might rally. It would depend on the strength of her
constitution. Nothing that he could do for her would be left undone.

"In th