“It is strange how many mouthfuls of absolute happiness one sometimes tastes in the midst of trouble,” adding--I can see her attitude as she talked, standing with eyes cast down, mouth sweet and smiling, and fingers playing with her apron-tassels--a trick she has--“that she now felt as if she should never be afraid of trouble any more.” That also is comprehensible. Anything which calls out the dormant energies of the character must do a woman good. With some women, to be good and to be happy is one and the same thing. She is changed too, I can see. Pale as she looks, there is a softness in her manner and a sweet composure in her face, different from the restlessness I once noticed there--the fitful irritability, or morbid pain, perceptible at times, though she tried hard to disguise both. And succeeded doubtless, in all eyes but mine. She is more cheerful too than she ever used to be, not restlessly lively, like her eldest sister, but seeming to carry about in her heart a well-spring of content, which bubbles out refreshingly upon everything and everybody about her. It is especially welcome in the sick room, where, she knows, our chief aim is to keep the mind at ease, and the feeble brain in absolute rest. I could smile, remembering the hours we have spent--patient, doctor and nurse, in the most puerile amusements, and altogether delicious nonsense, since Mr. Johnston became convalescent. All this is over now. I knew it was. I sat by the fire, watching her play off her loving jests upon her father, and prattle with him, childish-like, about all that was going on downstairs. “You little quiz!” he cried at last. “Doctor, this girl is growing--I can't say witty--but absolutely mischievous.” I said, talents long dormant sometimes appeared. We might yet discover in Miss Theodora Johnston the most brilliant wit of her day. “Doctor Urquhart, it's a shame! How can you laugh at me so? But I don't care. You are all the better for having somebody to laugh at. You know you are.” I did know it--only too well, and my eyes might have betrayed it, for hers sank. She coloured a little, sat down to her work, and sewed on silently, thoughtfully, for a good while. What was in her mind? Was it pity? Did she fancy she had hurt me--touched unwittingly one of my many sores? She knows I have had a hard life, with few pleasures in it; she would gladly give me some; she is sorry for me. Most people's compassion is worse than their indifference; but hers--given out of the fullness of the pure, tender, unsuspicious heart--I can bear it. I can be grateful for it. On this first evening that broke the uniformity of the sick-room, we thought it better, she and I, considering the peculiarities of the rest of the family, which she seems to take for granted I am aware of, and can make allowance for--that none of them should be admitted this night. A prohibition not likely to afflict them much. “And pray, Miss Dora, how do you mean to entertain the doctor and me?”