eated over and over. It was of Nan,
always of Nan that she spoke.

Nan must have this; Nan must not do that. It was her duty to protect
Nan and guard her. She followed the girl in perilous journeys; she
tried to guide her from dangerous courses. She betrayed her anxious
care for her in every word she uttered. And then sometimes she would
say something that Nan could not comprehend.

"Florence's child!" she would murmur. "Florence's child!" and then she
would catch herself back with a sudden look of fear as though she had
betrayed a secret.

"My mother's name was Florence," Nan would say brokenly. "But I don't
know what she means. She never knew my mother."

At last came a change, and then Nan was excluded from the room.

"You might excite her, and she must be carefully guarded against any
chance of that," the doctor said in explanation.

But Nan was almost too happy to care. The first sound of the low,
sweet voice speaking intelligently sent a thrill of passionate
gratitude to her heart.

How she and Delia plotted and planned for the invalid. How Nan made
the room to fairly blossom with the flowers that daily came pouring in
from all manner of strange and unexpected sources.

"I never knew she had such lots of friends," the girl said one day to
Delia.

The woman looked down at her with a flash of superior understanding in
her eyes.

"She's a wise one," she said. "She goes her own way, and it's little
she asks of any one and it's less she says. But what she does ain't
little, I can tell you, Nan. I know of many a thing she's done for
those who, if they haven't got money, have the grateful hearts in them
to remember kindness and to love the one that shows it to them. Some
day you'll know her for what she is, and then you'll never strive
against her any more and you'll love her as many another has done
before you."

The girl gazed straight into the woman's eyes. "I love her now,
Delia," she said. "I've loved her from the first minute--only I didn't
know it some of the time and the rest I was a horrid--little--beast, so
there!"

Oh, the happy days that Nan spent in that quiet room above stairs. How
she grew to love it! The sunshine coming through the curtains and
making great patches of mellow light upon the floor seemed more bright
here than anywhere else. If it rained, this place was less dreary than
any other, and in sun or storm it was the only spot that Nan felt had
the power to quel