know--but
you must try not to dwell on it. If you throw yourself back, I shan't be
allowed to come again."

Lucy put a great restraint upon herself. "They've told you:--poor granny
is dead?" she whispered, but more calmly.

"Yes--they've told me. I believe I know the worst now. I've one bit of
comfort, though, for all of us. I've just seen the doctor, and he says
she was dead before the fire reached her. She must have died almost as
soon as she lay down."

Then Lucy broke down and wept from sheer relief. "Oh, thank God," she
said, fervently, "for taking her to Himself, and sparing her the horrors
of that awful night. Thank Him, too, for Mona's sake. The thought that
granny perished in the fire because no one reached her in time would have
been the worst of all the thoughts weighing on her mind. She will be
spared that now."

At that moment, though, Mona was troubled by no thoughts at all. She lay
in her bed in the ward just as they had placed her there hours before,
absolutely unconscious. If it had not been for the faint beating of her
heart she might have been taken for dead. Doctors came and looked at her
and went away again, the day nurses went off duty, and the night nurses
came on and went off again, but still she showed no sign of life.
With her head and her arms swathed in bandages, she lay with her eyes
closed, her lips slightly parted. It was not until the following day, the
day Granny Barnes was laid to rest in the little churchyard on the hill,
that she opened her eyes on this world once more, and glanced about her,
dazed and bewildered.

"Where?" she began. But before she had finished her sentence, her eyes
closed.

This time, though, it was not unconsciousness, but sleep that she drifted
off into, and it was not until afternoon that she opened her eyes once
more.

"Where am I?" She completed her question this time. Then, at the sight
of a nurse in uniform, a look of alarm crept into her eyes.

"Where are you, dear? Why, here in hospital, being taken care of, and
your mother is here, too."

"Mother."

"Yes, and we are looking after you so well! You are both better already."

The cheerful voice and smile, the kindly face, drove all Mona's fears away
at once, and for ever. But, as memory returned, other fears took their
place.

"Is--mother--hurt?"

"Yes--but, oh, not nearly as badly as she might have been. She will be
well again soon. You shall go into the ward with he