children than I have for a long time."

"Thurnall?" asks Elsley, who is too absorbed in the "Wreck" to ask
after the children; but the name catches his ear.

"Mr. Heale's new assistant--the man who was wrecked," answers she,
too absorbed, in her turn, in the children to notice her husband's
startled face.

"Thurnall? Which Thurnall?"

"Do you know the name? It's not a common one," says she, moving to the
door.

"No--not a common one at all! You said the children were not well?"!

"I am glad that you thought of asking after the poor things."

"Why, really, my dear--" But before he can finish his excuse (probably
not worth hearing), she has trotted up-stairs again to the nest, and
is as busy as ever. Possibly Clara might do the greater part of what
she does, and do it better: but still, are they not her children? Let
those who will call a mother's care mere animal instinct, and liken it
to that of the sparrow or the spider: shall we not rather call it a
Divine inspiration, and doubt whether the sparrow and the spider must
not have souls to be saved, if they, too, show forth that faculty of
maternal love which is, of all human feelings, most inexplicable and
most self-sacrificing; and therefore, surely, most heavenly? If that
does not come down straight from heaven, a "good and perfect gift,"
then what is heaven, and what the gifts which it sends down?

But poor Elsley may have had solid reasons for thinking more of the
name of Thurnall than of his children's health: we will hope so for
his sake; for, after sundry melodramatic pacings and starts (Elsley
was of a melodramatic turn, and fond of a scene, even when he had no
spectator, not even a looking-glass;) besides ejaculations of "It
cannot be!" "If it were!" "I trust not!" "A fresh ghost to torment
me!" "When will come the end of this accursed coil which I have wound
round my life?" and so forth, he decided aloud that the suspense was
intolerable; and enclosing himself in his poetical cloak and Mazzini
wide-awake, strode down to the town, and into the shop. And as he
entered it, "his heart sank to his midriff, and his knees below were
loosed." For there, making up pills, in a pair of brown holland
sleeves of his own manufacture (for Tom was a good seamster, as all
travellers should be), whistled Lilliburlero, as of old, the Tom of
other days, which Elsley's muse would fain have buried in a thousand
Lethes.

Elsley came forward to the counter carelessly, nev