"OH, Mavis! Oh, Bob! Mother's very ill! Oh, isn't it dreadful? The doctor's going to send a hospital nurse to take care of her, for he says she'll be ill for weeks, if—if she recovers!" And Rose finished her sentence with a burst of tears. The scene was the parlour at the Mill House one afternoon during the first week of the new year. Rose had crept quietly into the room with a scared look on her face, having overheard a conversation between her father and the village doctor, the latter of whom had been called in to prescribe for Mrs. John, who had been ailing since the night of the concert, when she had taken a chill. No one had thought her seriously ill until that morning, when she had declared herself too unwell to rise, and had been unable to touch the breakfast which her little daughter had carried upstairs to her. Then it was that her husband had become alarmed, and the doctor had been sent for. The medical man's face had worn a grave expression as he had left the sick-room, and he had immediately informed Mr. Grey that his wife was seriously ill with pneumonia, the result of a neglected cold. "If she recovers?" echoed Bob, questioningly. "What do you mean, Rose? It's only a cold that mother has, isn't it?" "No, it's something much worse than that—pneumonia. Mrs. Long's husband died from pneumonia." And poor Rose's tears and sobs increased at the remembrance. "Oh, don't cry so dreadfully, Rosie," implored Mavis. "People often recover from pneumonia, indeed they do! Mother has nursed several pneumonia patients since I can remember, and not one of them died. You mustn't think Aunt Lizzie won't recover." "But she's very ill—the doctor said so," returned Rose, nevertheless checking her sobs, and regarding Mavis with an expression of dawning hope in her blue eyes. "He said she would require most careful nursing, and he couldn't tell how it would go with her." "Doctors never can tell," said Mavis, sagely. "Mother says they can only do their best, and leave the result to God. Poor Aunt Lizzie! How sorry I am she should be so ill!" "The doctor says we are not to go into her room again," sighed Rose. "I heard him say to father, 'Don't let the children into her room to worry her; she must be kept very quiet.'" "As though we would worry her!" cried Bob, in much indignation. He felt inclined to follow his sister's example and burst into tears. But he manfully, though with much difficulty, retained his composure. Before night, a trained nurse from a nursing institution at Oxford was installed at the Mill House, and took possession of the sick-room. And during the anxious days which followed, the miller's wife approached very near the valley of the shadow of death, so that those who loved her went in fear and trembling, and stole about the house with noiseless footsteps and hushed voices.