themselves had become beautiful in clothing her;
following the slim satin hand as it flitted to and
fro over wild shaggy heads, laying hold of rough
horny other hands, reducing all things around
to a sort of order in peace, leaving hush and
comfort in its track, as with the influence of a
holy magnetism. "This is her daily work,"
said Hester, "and I——? I have been thinking
about whether or not I was to live a lady!"

One dying woman, with the very print of
death upon her face, was raving meekly about
her home and her children; her husband, who
was trying to keep things together till such
time as she might be cured and come back to
laugh over his troubles, his makeshifts, his
helplessness, in her absence; about the baby who
badly wanted the tender hands about his little
body, who wailed now through the nights and
would not let the neighbours sleep, but who
would coo and be comforted when next she
chirruped in his face; about the tender little
daughter of few years, who had a burden upon
her shoulders too much even for a woman to
bear.

"And, mother!" she said, "Won't the good
man be right glad to see me? And won't he
be surprised to see me walking in to him?
And how he'll be going to his work in the
morning without the house and the children on
his back as well as the hod of mortar. I'll be
there some evening before him when he comes
home. And won't the lonesome look go off
his face. And won't he give me a kiss?"

So spoke the dying heart; with its little
hopes so green and flourishing on the earth,
while their root was already torn from them
and shrivelling into dust.

"Oh, yes!" she said, in answer to the nun,
"I'll be willing enough to go, when so happen
the Lord may want me. But sure I am he
doesn't want me yet. I couldn't go to heaven
till I rear my little baby."

In another corner a candle was burning, two
nuns were praying, and a soul was passing
away. Hester and the mother knelt also at a
distance, till the supreme moment of a fellow-
creature was over. And a few minutes after,
in a quiet passage leading from the ward, with
a door closed between them and the dead and
dying, Hester was weeping with wild sobs in
the mother's arms.

"Let me stay with you," she whispered.
"I am not much use now, but I might learn,
and I could help."

"No, no, my dear, not for always, at least,"
said the nun. "You do not know what you
are asking."

"I could make these black robes, dear
madam," pleaded Hester. "And I could sit
up at nights."

"Could you?" said the mother, smiling.
"We will find you some more suitable work
perhaps."

"Suitable for you, then why not suitable for
me?" persisted Hester.

"People do not come here so rashly," said
the mother, gravely. "They think about it
long. They lay their case before God for years,
and only make up their minds when they feel
assured by long trial that he wants them to do
his work in this way. Your call, I have little
doubt, is elsewhere. Yet never fear but we will
love you and protect you all we can. And you
shall always be our sister, wherever may be
your place, whatever may be your work."

The next ward visited was a pleasant room
upstairs, a place in which the sick people were
getting better. In one bed near a window a
woman was propped up, with some needlework
in her fingers; a white happy face, only newly
rid of pain, newly enraptured with peace; two
bony hands stitching feebly, the hair banded
with smooth care, the head crowned with a
snowy cap, the whole figure arranged with
festive joy, and raised up out of prostrate weakness
to give a grateful welcome to the return
of life. A friend had come to see her; had
brought flowers. A child sat between them
reading aloud from a book. In another bed a
fragile looking girl was lying dreaming about
her mother in the country, dreaming with wide-
open eyes that followed curiously all the gambols
of the flies upon the ceiling. She wanted a
letter written to her home. And Hester
undertook to write the letter.

While that letter was getting written the
mother was called away, and Hester remained
sitting by the sick girl's bed; who told her
about the hills amongst which she had lived,
about the pleasant wooded valley where her
mother's cottage stood, about her hens, and her
dairy, her churning, and her gardening.

"And nothing would do for me," she said,
"but I must come up to London to be a milliner.
And my mother cried sore. And the town air
choked me, after the wind that goes blowing
through our hills. But now I am getting stout
and well, and I will go back to the green fields.
The sister gives me a little bit of lavender
sometimes, and I snuff it on my pillow here when
my eyes are shut. And it has just the old smell
of mother's parlour at home."

Meanwhile the Mother Augustine sat over
her desk, in her little room.

A letter was unfolded before her, with the
Munro arms at the top; and the date showed
it written from the Castle of Glenluce, a full
month before that present hour.

"Our dear Janet is a very sunbeam under
our roof—-so brilliant—-so piquant———"

"Ah, that is not the place," said the Mother
Augustine, and turned a page.

"It is a want we really feel in our seclusion"
—yes, this was the part that the mother
wanted to refer to—"our seclusion." And
the mother folded and straightened out the
paper.

"Now that we go so very seldom to London
it is most desirable to have a person at hand,
who will really be accomplished at her needle.
You know I like my gowns to fit nicely—-a
wrinkle annoys me. Then it is so difficult to
wear out one's handsome dresses here, and one
reads of the changes in the fashions—-more