one loves is no
hardship, especially when one is strong and young and hopeful, and when
one has great matters at stake, such as the health and wealth of an
invalid mother, or the paying off of disagreeable debts.

Even the limp Mrs. Chadwick shared in the general joy; for Mr.
Greenwood was so utterly discouraged with her mismanagement of the
house, so determined not to fly to ills he knew not of, and so anxious
to bring order out of chaos, that on the spur of the moment one day he
married her. On the next day he discharged the cook, hired a better
one the third, dunned the delinquent boarder the fourth, and collected
from him on the fifth; so the May check (signed Clementine Chadwick
Greenwood) was made out for eighty-five dollars.

But in the midst of it all, when everything in the outside world danced
with life and vigor, and the little house could hardly hold its sweet
content,--without a glimmer of warning, without a moment's fear or
dread, without the precious agony of parting, Mrs. Oliver slipped
softly, gently, safely, into the Great Silence.

Mercifully it was Edgar, not Polly, who found her in her accustomed
place on the cushions, lying with closed eyelids and smiling lips.

It was half past five. . . . Polly must have gone out at four, as
usual, and would be back in half an hour. . . . Yung Lee was humming
softly in the little kitchen. . . . In five minutes Edgar Noble had
suffered, lived, and grown ten years. He was a man. . . . And then
came Polly,--and Mrs. Bird with her, thank Heaven!--Polly breathless
and glowing, looking up at the bay window for her mother's smile of
welcome.

In a few seconds the terrible news was broken, and Polly, overpowered
with its awful suddenness, dropped before it as under a physical blow.

It was better so. Mrs. Bird carried her home for the night, as she
thought, but a merciful blur stole over the child's tired brain, and
she lay for many weeks in a weary illness of delirium and stupor and
fever.

Meanwhile, Edgar acted as brother, son, and man of the house. He it
was who managed everything, from the first sorrowful days up to the
closing of the tiny upper flat where so much had happened: not great
things of vast outward importance, but small ones,--little miseries and
mortifications and struggles and self-denials and victories, that made
the past half year a milestone in his life.

A week finished it all! It takes a very short time, he thought, to
scatter