lustration: "The meagre figure of Mrs. Silk."]

"I only 'eard of it half an hour ago," she said, reproachfully. "I saw
the doctor's boy, and I left my work and came over at once. Why didn't
you let me know?"

Mr. Wilks muttered that he didn't know, and lay crossly regarding his
attentive neighbour as she knelt down and daintily lit the fire. This
task finished, she proceeded to make the room tidy, and then set about
making beef-tea in a little saucepan.

"You lay still and get well," she remarked, with tender playfulness.
"That's all you've got to do. Me and Teddy'll look after you."

"I couldn't think of troubling you," said the steward, earnestly.

"It's no trouble," was the reply. "You don't think I'd leave you here
alone helpless, do you?"

"I was going to send for old Mrs. Jackson if I didn't get well to-day,"
said Mr. Wilks.

Mrs. Silk shook her head at him, and, after punching up his pillow, took
an easy chair by the fire and sat there musing. Mr. Edward Silk came in
to tea, and, after remarking that Mr. Wilks was very flushed and had got
a nasty look about the eyes and a cough which he didn't like, fell to
discoursing on death-beds.

"Good nursing is the principal thing," said his mother. "I nursed my
pore dear 'usband all through his last illness. He couldn't bear me to
be out of the room. I nursed my mother right up to the last, and your
pore Aunt Jane went off in my arms."

Mr. Wilks raised himself on his elbow and his eyes shone feverishly in
the lamplight. "I think I'll get a 'ospital nurse to-morrow," he said,
decidedly.

"Nonsense," said Mrs. Silk. "It's no trouble to me at all. I like
nursing; always did."

Mr. Wilks lay back again and, closing his eyes, determined to ask the
doctor to provide a duly qualified nurse on the morrow. To his
disappointment, however, the doctor failed to come, and although he felt
much better Mrs. Silk sternly negatived a desire on his part to get up.

"Not till the doctor's been," she said, firmly. "I couldn't think of
it."

"I don't believe there's anything the matter with me now," he declared.

"'Ow odd--'ow very odd that you should say that!" said Mrs. Silk,
clasping her hands.

"Odd!" repeated the steward, somewhat crustily. "How do you mean--odd?"

"They was the very last words my Uncle Benjamin ever uttered in this
life," said Mrs. Silk, with dramatic impressiveness.

The steward was silent, then, with the ominous precedent of Uncle