doors then. I am going to inquire after Mrs. Bolton's little girl before I fetch the flowers from the conservatory."

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Oh, yes; but you must not be any later, as

I like to have plenty of time to dress," answered Eleanor.

CHAPTER VI.

"Behold that daughter of the world; she is full of gaiety and gladness."

TUPPER.

EDITH once more opened the hall door, and, loosing her dog Brenda, set off at a brisk pace for the lodge, and narrowly escaped meeting a party of visitors, with whom she must have returned to the house, but, catching a distant glimpse of them, she turned off into a path leading through a thick fir plantation, and thus was lost to sight.

On reaching the cottage, she saw the curtains of the bed-room were drawn, and feared the child must be more seriously ill than she expected. She tapped gently at the door, which was opened by her little Sunday scholar, Mary

Bolton, and, asking how her sister was, the child replied

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Very bad, Miss Edith. The doctor has just been here, and says he does not think she will get better; but, will you sit down, if you please, and I will call mother?" said the little girl, dusting a chair, and placing it by the fire. for her.

"Tell her not to leave Emma. I will come to her, if she likes to see me," replied Edith. Soon the little girl returned, and, curtsying, said her mother would be very glad to see Miss Edith, and led the way to the room in which the sick child lay.

A sad scene it was, to see the poor little thing gasping for breath after the fit of coughing, the mother raising it in its little crib, to endeavour to ease the suffocating feeling of the infant sufferer.

"Thank you, miss," said she, "for coming; but I hope you won't get your feet wet and catch cold, as my husband says the snow is thick in some places already.”

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Oh, no, I hope not-I have my goloshes on, and am well wrapped up; but I only heard of poor Emma's illness last evening, on our

return home from Hornby Castle, where we have been spending some days."

"She has had the croup before, Miss, but never so bad; and I lost one from it three years before you came to live in these parts.

The

doctor gives me no hopes," and the poor mother's voice became choked with sobs, as she put up her apron to wipe her fast falling tears.

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"I do try to say, God's will be done; but, indeed, it is very hard to feel it from one's heart. I dare say it is wrong of me, but to lose her dear merry face will be such a miss, and her poor father takes on so much that it makes me worse still."

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Oh, Mrs. Bolton, I wish I knew how to comfort you," and the sympathizing tears sprung to Edith's eyes, in themselves soothing to the poor woman

"In the very house of grief,

There to enter, weep, and listen,

Is itself a large relief."

The little invalid, exhausted by suffering, and having a few moments' ease, appeared to slumber.

"She is sleeping, but it will not last many

minutes; those spasms are sure to return till the last," said the mother; "it was so with my poor Tommy," and she wept again.

"Mrs. Bolton, are you not glad that your boy is where he can never more suffer pain, always happy with his Saviour amongst the bright and holy angels? and will you not pray God to take dear Emma soon to heaven, to be another little angel? It grieves you so to see her pain. You would, I am sure, not wish to keep her here to suffer longer."

By degrees, she gently led the mother to feel it was a hand of mercy and not of wrath that was afflicting her, and to pray for faith to trust her darling to the Saviour's love.

Hearing the clock strike the half-hour after three, Edith took her leave, promising to come again early the following morning, and walked quickly home to fetch the flowers, fearing lest she might keep Eleanor waiting, and so annoy her. Her cottage visit had not only comforted its inmates, but had a beneficial influence over her own mind; for, with suffering and death so present, how could she find room to think of her minor trials and vexations, and she felt at peace even with Eleanor, and did not wish to