s, given also to card-playing and racing; but he had a way
with him which few women could resist and which made men his friends;
and he had a sense of humour akin to her own. In any case, one day she
let him catch her up in his arms, and there was the end of it. But no,
not the end, after all. It was only the beginning of real life for her.
All that had gone before seemed but playing on the threshold, though
it had meant hard, bitter hard work, and temptation, and patience, and
endurance of many kinds. And now George was gone for ever. But George's
little boy lay there on the bed in a soft sleep, with all his life
before him.

She turned from the warm window and the buoyant, inspiring scene to
the bed. Stooping over, she kissed the sleeping boy with an abrupt
eagerness, and made a little awkward, hungry gesture of love over him,
and her face flushed hot with the passion of motherhood in her.

"All I've got now," she murmured. "Nothing else left--nothing else at
all."

She heard the door open behind her, and she turned round. Aunt Kate was
entering with a bowl in her hands.

"I heard you moving about, and I've brought you something hot to drink,"
she said.

"That's real good of you, Aunt Kate," was the cheerful reply. "But it's
near supper-time, and I don't need it."

"It's boneset tea--for your cold," answered Aunt Kate gently, and put it
on the high dressing-table made of a wooden box and covered with muslin.
"For your cold, Cassy," she repeated.

The little woman stood still a moment gazing at the steaming bowl,
lines growing suddenly around her mouth, then she looked at Aunt Kate
quizzically. "Is my cold bad--so bad that I need boneset?" she asked in
a queer, constrained voice.

"It's comforting, is boneset tea, even when there's no cold, 'specially
when the whiskey's good, and the boneset and camomile has steeped some
days."

"Have you been steeping them some days?" Cassy asked softly, eagerly.

Aunt Kate nodded, then tried to explain.

"It's always good to be prepared, and I didn't know but what the cold
you used to have might be come back," she said. "But I'm glad if it
ain't, if that cough of yours is only one of the measly little hacks
people get in the East, where it's so damp."

Cassy was at the window again, looking out at the dying radiance of the
sun. Her voice seemed hollow and strange and rather rough, as she said
in reply:

"It's a real cold, deep down, the same as I had nine years ago,