twittering faintly in a gilded cage. There were flowers in the two
windows, and in the vases on the table: evidently some loving hands
had arranged them that very morning. A large rocking-horse occupied
the centre of the floor: a doll lay with its face downwards on the
crimson carpet; a pile of wooden soldiers strutted on their zigzag
platform,--one or two had fallen off; a torn picture-book had been
flung beside them.

"That was my Janie's picture-book," said Mrs. Cheyne, mournfully: "she
was teaching her doll out of it just before she was taken ill. Nothing
was touched; by a sort of inspiration,--a foreboding,--I do not know
what,--I bade nurse leave the toys as they were. 'It is only an
interrupted game: let the darlings find their toys as they put them,'
I said to her that morning. Look at the soldiers, Bertie was always
for soldiers,--bless him!"

Her manner had grown calmer; and she spoke with such touching
tenderness that tears came to Phillis's eyes. But Mrs. Cheyne never
once looked at the girl; she lingered by the table a moment, adjusting
a leaf here and a bud there in the bouquets, and then she opened an
inner door leading to the night-nursery. Here the associations were
still more harrowing. The cots stood side by side under a muslin
canopy, with an alabaster angel between them; the little night-dresses
lay folded on the pillows; on each quilt were the scarlet
dressing-gown and the pair of tiny slippers; the clothes were piled
neatly on two chairs,--a boy's velvet tunic on one, a girl's white
frock, a little limp and discolored, hung over the rails of the
other.

"Everything just the same," murmured the poor mother. "Look here, my
dear,"--with a faint smile--"these are Bertie's slippers: there is the
hole he kicked in them when he was in his tempers, for my boy had the
Cheyne temper. He was Herbert's image,--his very image." She sighed,
paused, and went on: "Every night I come and sit beside their beds,
and then the darlings come to me. I can see their faces--oh, so
plainly!--and hear their voices. 'Good-night, dear mamma!' they seem
to say to me, only Bertie's voice is always the louder."

Her manner was becoming a little excited again; only Phillis took her
hand and pressed it gently, and the touch seemed to soothe her like
magic.

"I am so glad you come here every night," she said, in her sweet,
serious voice, from which every trace of fear had gone. "I think that
a beautiful idea, to come and sa