ate home, and taking me in your arms carried
me from the carriage to my bed. As you laid me down you said, 'My sister's
little friend, I am glad to have seen you once again. Bell tells me all
these years I have been absent you have been pleasant friends to each
other. You are dear and sweet because she loved you. I shall never see you
again perhaps, for when she dies I shall have no ties here and shall go
elsewhere. Kiss me good-bye,' and I did.

"For a year after that I was alone: then Esther Hooper came, and I was not
wretched. I have had my share of lovers and friends--what girl has
not?--have had rare treats of music, of books and paintings, and shared
their pleasant harmonies with an appreciative soul; and I have been very
contented.

"But now I am desolate again, and out of the darkness you have come and
beckoned me to follow you and stand near you all the rest of my life. It
will be happiness enough, as much as is good for me, to live with you,
even if I am nothing to you, for, oh, I love you very faithfully!"

And so, you know, they were married, with only the doctor and Mrs. Keller
to witness the ceremony; and at once, with her little decided way, the
sort of certainty that years of self-dependence give, she became his
nurse, attending to him as persistently and indefatigably as if the sole
purpose for which she had been born was that. From the first service she
rendered him--bathing his head and face through an intense August day with
iced water delicately perfumed, arranging the curtains so that the air,
when there was a breeze, blew freely to him, though the glare of the sun
was gone, and his room in dim, soothing shadow--she seemed a blessing to
him. Some hours after she came with her bright, quick ways, arranging his
disordered room, bringing order out of chaos on his dressing-table, never
peeping into things, and yet getting them into beautiful order, and,
wonderful to relate, keeping them so: the air seemed to grow cooler, his
medicine less bitter, the time shorter, and his broken leg and weary back
to ache less acutely.

One day she said in a shy way, "Mr. Norval, if you will let James lay out
your things, I will see what mending they need, and will sit here and do
them, so you sha'n't spend so many hours alone. Mrs. Keller has made some
friends in the house, and they kindly sit with her so much that she does
not need me."

"But, Percy, what's the use of James having a hand in it? Here are my
keys,