THE

HE next morning Naomi's pretty face appeared at the nursery door again, but this time disfigured with scarcely dried tears. She beckoned me to come out, and had scarcely a word for her little playmates. I put down Maidy, who was in my lap, and followed her into the parlor. She threw herself into my arms, and began to cry.

"Mr. Macnally is going away to-night," she said, between her sobs, "never to come back again. What can make him go? Something is the matter. Uncle is all upset about it, and Aunt Penelope sent me out of the room, and won't talk to me. Ned, even, feels sorry that he's going. What shall we do without him? I like him better than anybody I can think of. Oh, why, vhy does he have to go away?"

"Why does he say he has to go?" I asked, sitting down and drawing her down beside me.

"I don't know what he says to uncle. I know uncle thinks he ought not to go, and leave us, before

the year is out. Aunt Penelope answers short, and won't give me any satisfaction. And he-oh!-he looks so dreadfully. It makes me think of Shamus O'Brien, 'For his face is as pale as the face of the dead.' He's the handsomest, and the best, and the kindest! Oh, what will it be at home without him? Ned quarrelling all the time, and nobody to stop him-and no jokes, and no fun-and nobody to take my part! I wish we could go to the city right away. I don't want to stay here any longer. Did you know he was going away to-night?"

"No, Naomi, I didn't."

"I wonder why he didn't tell you. Did you know he meant to go at all?"

"I knew he might go. I didn't know when he'd go."

"Has he heard any bad news from home, I wonder? I think it's so hard, Aunt Penelope won't tell me. They treat me like a child. As if I couldn't be trusted to know such a thing as that. I care more than any of them, and yet they act as if it wasn't any interest to me. He's all packed up-he's telegraphed for passage on the steamer that sails to-morrow. He's given Ned his gun, and me some books. He's just as nice as ever. He tries to talk the same and be like himself, but it isn't natural, and his face is so pale, and his eyes so hollow. The chambermaid says he didn't go to bed at all, but just walked about his room all night. At breakfast it was horrid. He couldn't eat anything, though he took lots of things on his plate. He tried to make believe he did. But all he took was a cup of coffee, strong enough to kill him. Aunt Penelope made it for him so, I guess, because she saw he couldn't touch his

breakfast. She didn't even try to talk, except to stop me if I said anything, good or bad, to anybody. Oh, it was a horrid breakfast-but to-morrow will be worse.' And poor Naomi hid her face in my lap, and cried abandonedly.

"Don't cry, Naomi. You know people can't always be together. When you get older you'll be used to partings.

"I thought you'd feel badly too, you've always seeemed to like him so."

"I do feel sorry, ever so sorry. But you know I'm older than you, and I've said good-bye to so many people."

"Then I don't want to get older, if I'm going to feel that way about things. I could say good-bye to a hundred thousand people, but it wouldn't make me used to saying good-bye to him. If he was going away happy, and all that, it would be bad enough. But to know he's in trouble-and not to know what the matter is! And to keep thinking all the time it may get worse, and not to know for certain anything about him! I didn't think you'd be that way. I thought you'd feel like me about it, he was such friends with you. Why, that ridiculous old candlestick you gave him with the ribbon around it on his birthday, he packed it up the very first thing, for I went up to his room to take him some things that the laundress had forgotten, and he vas packing it into a box all with tissue paper around t. And Maidy's little Cinderella was in the tray of his trunk. Poor Maidy! She won't have him to carry her on his shoulder any more. But she'll soon get over it, I suppose, she is so little."

I stroked Naomi's yellow-brown hair, and would

have smiled, if I had had the heart. I petted and comforted her as well as I could, and she soon went home, to hang around her tutor's closed door, to be snubbed by her aunt, snarled at by Ned, ignored by her uncle, and to have her honest grief most entirely disregarded.

The day passed heavily enough with me. After Naomi's visit, nobody at all came near me. I felt very sure he would not go away without seeing me. It seemed to me probable he would come the last thing before he went away.

The train went at nine fifteen. At eight o'clock he had not come. It was a warm, close night, not a breath of wind stirring. All the parlor windows were open, and the doors. It was not hot-it never was hot at South Berwick-but there was to-night a quality in the air that made it abominable: it weighed you down like lead; it oppressed you like a trouble: you opened a window and no freshness entered; you fanned yourself, and were not the better. I sat down by the parlor lamp awhile, then walked restlessly about the room, and then went from one room to another, trying to occupy myself, but listening intently all the time. All the doors and windows were open; it seemed as if everything were laid under a spell, not to be banging and fluttering in the usual gale.

Sophia had taken her work, and was sitting in the dining-room by a small shaded lamp. She often sat there in the evening, to be near the children. The dining-room, as I have said, was next the nursery, and communicated with it by a door. This door was shut, however, to keep out the noise and light. Sophia trusted to her sharp ears to hear them through the hall which led into the sort of unfinished garret into which the

nursery opened. The parlor and my sleeping-room were on the other side of the hall, all opening, in the same way, on this unceiled, ill-lighted space. Stairs to the attic led up from it, through a door; stairs from the kitchen led up to it from below. I should think it was about sixteen feet square. You could touch the beams by slightly lifting your hand; they were cobwebby and dusty, notwithstanding Sophia; across the floor she had laid strips of rag carpet from the stairs to the different doors, that the children might not be roused by steps on the bare floor.

I stood for a moment by the open window of my room, looking out into the starless night; then crossed this chamber, and went softly into the nursery. A shaded lamp was burning in one corner; the door was open, and the window. The room was all in the scrupulous order in which Sophia always left it when her day's work was done, and her nurslings were asleep. Here lay Maidy's little shoes, beside the chair on which lay her folded clothes; there Baby's; there the bath-tub, with its sponges and towels on the rack beside it, the soap and powder box and brushes on their little table, close at hand. Before the unlighted stove hung the bathing blankets, and two little wrappers. There was not a thing out of place; all told the story of monotonous nursery life. That was the life that lay before me; that was what was to satisfy my soul henceforth. I took the lamp in my hand, and went and stood below the two little cribs, where the light fell upon the two children in their peaceful sleep. I gazed long and steadfastly. Yes, it ought to satisfy me; it should satisfy me. I thought of the agony that wrung me