near as a mother can make him so,
perfect."

"Wouldn't that make him a little--well--uninteresting?"

Mrs Jones's eyes blazed reproof as she answered: "Freddy is not
uninteresting," she said.

Presently her voice dropped to a hushed whisper. "Then, there is the
thought"--she said--"the haunting thought--should he die--should it
please God to take him from us, we lose our all. All!" she repeated;
and the word, spoken in that tone of heavy solemnity, dropped like lead
upon Flora Macmichel's heart.

If she lost Connell there was still, in her case, her husband; but she
thought of the husband of Mrs Jones, and was silent.

"I have a friend," she said, suddenly rousing herself to make one
effort suitable to the occasion, "whose only little girl died last
year. They thought her heart would break, but it did not. She--in a
marvellous way she bore it. Never once did she seem to me to
sorrow--painfully. The child, for long and long after she was dead,
seemed with her, she told me." She leant forward in her chair; her
voice, which was a rather harsh-speaking voice, grew low and earnest.
Was it possible that she--she, Flora Macmichel--had joined the company
of the preachers! "Don't you think that alleviations undreamed of are
always sent?" she asked, smarting tears in her eyes, her voice
breaking.

"Perhaps I ought not to say it," the other woman said, "it is my want
of faith, of which I should be ashamed; but it seems to me that
nothing--nothing--in this world, of course--could atone."

A bell clashed sharply.

By leaning back slightly in her chair, Mrs Jones could get, it seemed,
a side view of the door.

"Dear me! It is the boy from the telegraph office," she said. "I never
see him without the dreadful fear that something may be amiss. Isn't it
old-fashioned of me?"

The flush which told of disease had deepened on her cheeks; she laid a
hand upon her chest as she arose. "If you will excuse me for half a
moment----?"

But Mrs Macmichel had sprung to her feet and was at the door before the
other. "Let me!" she said hurriedly. "I--I have my hat on. You might
take cold----"

"Excuse me!" Mrs Jones cried.

"You really must allow me!" said Mrs Macmichel.

There was quite a scuffle at the door as to which should go out first.

It was the younger and stronger woman who dashed across the hall and
snatched the telegram from the boy upon the steps. She came back,
crushing the orange envelope, unopened, in her hand. Fu