"We will put these in the center of the supper-table," she said. "I should like to have everything as bright and cheerful as possible for your father to-night." "Yes, that's capital," said Effie. "We ought to have something particularly good for him to eat, Effie." "But, mother, he said he wasn't hungry. You remember how he complained of having so many meals at The Grange." "Yes, yes, he always was a most abstemious man; but I know what he never can resist, and that is cold raspberry tart and cream. There are plenty of raspberries ripe in the plantation--I will gather some, and I'll make the pastry for the tart myself." "Very well, mother; but is it well for you to fag yourself picking those raspberries, and then making the tart?" "I want to make it--I should love to make it. I used to be famed for my pastry. My mother used to say, 'You have a light hand for pastry, Mary.' I remember so well when I made my first tart. I was just fifteen--it was my fifteenth birthday. Mother showed me how to do it; and I remember how the water ran all over the pastry-board. Afterward I was the best hand at pastry in the house. Yes, I'll make the tart myself. Here is sixpence, Effie; run to the dairy and get some cream. And listen, love, as you go through the house you might tell Jane to get the pastry-board ready." "All right, mother, I'll tell her to put it in the larder. You must not go into the hot kitchen to make that tart." "Very well, child, I'll remember. Now run and get the cream." Effie left her mother standing by the raspberry plantation. She was pulling the ripe raspberries and dropping them into a large cabbage leaf which she held. Her slender but weak figure was drawn up to its full height. There was a look of nervous energy about her which Effie had not observed for many a long day. The curious phase into which her mother had entered had an alarming effect upon the young girl. It frightened her far more than her father's look of lassitude and the burning touch of his hands. She tried to turn her thoughts from it. After all, why should she become nervous herself, and meet trouble halfway? She went across the village street, and entering the pretty dairy, asked for the cream. "Is it true, Miss Staunton, that the doctor has come back again?" asked the woman of the shop, as she handed her the jug of cream across the counter. "Yes, Mrs. Pattens, it is quite true," replied Effie. "There's good news now at The Grange. Mrs. Harvey is doing splendidly, and little Freda is nearly well again." "Well, it is a good thing the doctor can be spared," said the woman; "we want him bad enough here, and it seemed cruel-like that he should have been sort of buried alive at The Grange." "He is only able to be spared now," said Effie, "because he has secured the services of a very wonderful nurse."