good. I'll see you again, Mrs. Drayton. Good-night, Mercy, and do
keep a brighter face. There--kiss me. Now, good-night--what a silly,
affectionate little goose--and mind you are in bed and asleep before I
return, or I shall be that angry--yes, I shall. You never saw me angry.
Well, never mind. Good-night."

The door opened and closed. Mercy went back into the room. It was
cheerless and empty, and the children's happy voices lived in it no
more. The girl's heart ached with a dull pain that had never a pang at
all, but was dumb and dead and cold; and Mercy was all alone.

"Perhaps he was only in fun when he said that about walking out with
somebody and trying to forget, and not being seen," she thought. "Yes;
he must have been only in fun," she thought, "because he knew how I
waited and waited."

Then she took up again the book that he had hardly glanced at. It fell
open at a yellow, dried-up rose that had left the stain of its heart's
juice on the white leaf.

"Yes, he was only in fun," she said, and then laughed a little; and then
a big drop fell on to the open page and on to the dead flower.

Then she tried to be very brave.

"I must not cry; it makes my eyes, oh! so sore. I must get them well and
strong--oh, yes! I must be well and strong against--against--then."

She lifted her head slowly where she stood alone, and a smile, like a
summer breeze on still water, rippled over her mouth.

"He kissed me," she thought, "and he came to see me--all this long, long
way."

A lovely dream shone in her face now.

"And if he does not come again until--until then--he will be glad--oh,
he will be very glad!"

The thought of a future hour when the poor little soul should be rich
with something of her own that would be dearest of all because not all
her own, shone like a sleeping child's vision in her face. She went out
into the bar and lighted a candle.

"So that's your sweetheart--not the lawyer man, eh?" said Mrs. Drayton,
bustling about.

"I've no call to hide my face now--not now that he has come--have I?"
said Mercy.

"Well, he is free of his money, and I'se just been hoping you get some
of it, for, as I says, you want things bad, and them as has the looking
to it should find 'em, as is only reasonable."

Mercy did as she had been bidden: she went off to her bedroom. But her
head was too full of thoughts for sleep. She examined her face in the
glass, and smiled and blushed at it because he called it pretty.