ed, him as a child would kiss one she loved.

CHAPTER FORTY.

"I WANT TEACHER."

One low, weary, incessant cry in the shabby, sloping-roofed, whitewashed
room.

The place was scrupulously clean; there was not so much as a speck upon
the windows; but the chamber was miserably bare. One well-worn, damaged
rush-chair was beside the worm-eaten, stump bedstead, a box supported a
chipped white jug and basin, and an old sack unsewn and opened out
formed the carpet. The only other article of furniture was a thin, very
old, white scrap of dimity curtain half drawn across the lead
lattice-paned window upon a piece of tape.

And from the bed arose that one weary, constant cry from between the
fevered, cracked lips, night and day--

"I want teacher to come!"

For there was no mischief dancing in her unnaturally bright eyes; the
restless hands were not raised to play some trick; the face was not
drawn up in some mocking grimace: all was pitiful, and pinched, and sad;
for poor Feelier Potts lay sick unto death, and it seemed as if at any
moment the dark shadow would float forth from the open window, bearing
one more sleeping spirit away.

"I want teacher!--I want teacher!"--night and day that weary, weary
burden, ever in the same unreasoning strain; and it was in vain that the
poor rough mother, softened now in face of this terrible trouble, sought
to give comfort.

"But she can't come now, my bairn--she can't come. Oh, do be quiet--
do!"

"I want teacher--I want teacher to come."

Unreasoning ever--for poor Feelier was almost beyond reasoning--there
was one great want in her shadowed mind, and it found vent between her
lips for the first days loudly, then painfully low, and at last in a
hoarse murmur, but always the same--

"I want teacher to come."

"I won't come anigh you to speak, miss, for it wouldn't be right,"
sobbed poor, broken-down Mrs Potts, weak now and worn out, as she stood
at the cottage gate, after making signs for Hazel to come to the door.
For nights past she had been watching by her child's couch, while her
husband had kept watch at the public-house till it was shut, and then he
had slept in a barn. For he had only one body, and he was terribly
afraid lest it should be stricken by the sore disease.

"I am not afraid of the infection, Mrs Potts," said Hazel kindly. "You
look worn out; let me give you a cup of tea."

"My dear Hazel," said Mrs Thorne from the kitchen, where she was seated