"Yes, very good all day."

A long deep sigh. Ethel's two tears stood on her cheeks.

"My love to them all. I hope I shall see them to-morrow. God bless
you, my dear, good-night."

Ethel went upstairs, saddened and yet soothed. The calm silent
sorrow, too deep for outward tokens, was so unlike her father's
usually demonstrative habits, as to impress her all the more, yet
those two tears were followed by no more; there was much strangeness
and confusion in her mind in the newness of grief.

She found poor Flora, spent with exertion, under the reaction of all
she had undergone, lying on her bed, sobbing as if her heart would
break, calling in gasps of irrepressible agony on "mamma! mamma!" yet
with her face pressed down on the pillow that she might not be heard.
Ethel, terrified and distressed, timidly implored her to be
comforted, but it seemed as if she were not even heard; she would
have fetched some one, but whom? Alas! alas! it brought back the
sense that no mother would ever soothe them--Margaret, papa, both so
ill, nurse engaged with Margaret! Ethel stood helpless and
despairing, and Flora sobbed on, so that Mary awakened to burst out
in a loud frightened fit of crying; but in a few moments a step was
at the door, a knock, and Richard asked, "Is anything the matter?"

He was in the room in a moment, caressing and saying affectionate
things with gentleness and fondling care, like his mother, and which
recalled the days when he had been proud to be left for a little