at she could
gain small comfort from all his overweening devotion and pride.

The child and I were constantly together in those October days. I do
not think it would have been so but for the fact that Mr. Floyd wrote
daily concise and peremptory orders that Helen was to be out of doors
from morning till night, and that Dr. Sharpe, a brisk, keen-eyed old
gentleman, came every morning at breakfast-time to feel the little
girl's pulse, order her meals and command Mr. Raymond to let her have
all the play she could get before the cold weather came.

"You see," Helen would explain to me as we tramped the meadows and the
uplands gorgeous with every mellow hue of autumn's glorious time--"you
see, Floyd, I was going to die in September when papa came. Oh, I felt
so tired I wanted just to go to sleep. But papa came, took me in his
arms and held me there. Whenever I woke up, there he was, his strong
arms holding me tight. He wouldn't let me go, you know, so I couldn't
die. I couldn't have lived for grandpa: I knew that he would die too,
and that perhaps it would all be best."

"But now you are getting strong," I said: "your cheeks are quite rosy
now."

"Oh yes," she answered. "I like to live now. I love you so dearly,
Floyd, and I have such good times."

I loved her dearly too, after a boy's fashion. It was easy for me to
talk to her, and I told her many things that lay near my heart and far
from my tongue--much about my mother and my worship of her--about our
home and its surroundings--about my father and my brother Frank, and
my grief when they died. I had never expected to tell any one these
memories, but I told them all to Helen.

One day we came in a little later than usual. We had carried our
luncheon down to the beach, and had eaten it there: we had never been
quite so happy together before, for everything had conspired to make
our enjoyment perfect. We had made up stories about the people on
board the ships that went up and down in the offing; strange and
beautiful things had looked at us from out the sea; a fisherman had
offered us some oysters as he coasted about the bar in his boat, and I
had bought some and opened them for Helen with my knife, every blade
of which I broke in the effort. Altogether, we had had a blissful
experience.

But as, upon returning, we neared the house, Mills met us on the
terrace with a grave face. "You'd better go to your grandfather, Miss
Floyd," said he--"you had, indeed, or it will