her blue eyes, a little frown between them, and her
upper lip closed firm on her lower lip, where she had an uneven tooth.
When her father came, she'd jump up and hang on to his neck until he
groaned, then run away, but presently come stealing back on tiptoe. I
used to listen for her footsteps on the stairs, then the knock, the door
flung back or opened quietly--you never could tell which; and her voice,
with a little lisp, 'Are you better today, Mr. Brune? What funny things
you say when you're delirious! Father says you've been in heaps of
battles!"'

He got up, paced restlessly to and fro, and sat down again. "I remember
every word as if it were yesterday, all the things she said, and did;
I've had a long time to think them over, you see. Well, I must tell you,
the first morning that I was able to get up, I missed her. Dalton
came in her place, and I asked him where she was. 'My dear fellow,'
he answered, 'I've sent Eilie away to her old nurse's inn down on the
river; she's better there at this time of year.' We looked at each
other, and I saw that he had sent her away because he didn't trust me. I
was hurt by this. Illness spoils one. He was right, he was quite right,
for all he knew about me was that I could fight and had got drunk; but
I am very quick-tempered. I made up my mind at once to leave him. But
I was too weak--he had to put me to bed again. The very next morning he
came and proposed that I should go into partnership with him. He kept a
fencing-school and pistol-gallery. It seemed like the finger of God; and
perhaps it was--who knows?" He fell into a reverie, and taking out
his caporal, rolled himself a cigarette; having lighted it, he went on
suddenly: "There, in the room above the school, we used to sit in the
evenings, one on each side of the grate. The room was on the second
floor, I remember, with two windows, and a view of nothing but the
houses opposite. The furniture was covered up with chintz. The things on
the bookshelf were never disturbed, they were Eilie's--half-broken cases
with butterflies, a dead frog in a bottle, a horse-shoe covered with
tinfoil, some shells too, and a cardboard box with three speckled eggs
in it, and these words written on the lid: 'Missel-thrush from Lucy's
tree--second family, only one blown.'" He smoked fiercely, with puffs
that were like sharp sighs.

"Dalton was wrapped up in her. He was never tired of talking to me about
her, and I was never tired of hearing. We h