"I'll run home now, Mrs. Pemberton, and give the children their supper. I'll come back in an hour to hear what the doctor says, and to do anything for you I can." "Thank you! Thank you, Mrs. Pearse! I shall be very glad to see you, for I am grieved and half-terrified." "I'll be sure to come. Try to bear up, Mrs. Pemberton," said kind-hearted Mrs. Pearse, hurrying off just as the doctor came up to the door. True to her promise, Mrs. Pearse was back at the Cross. By this time the shutters of Mrs. Pemberton's shop were up; but the door stood ajar. Mrs. Pearse pushed it open and entered. Mrs. Pemberton was sitting on a chair, surrounded by hampers and baskets of fruit and vegetables, in the middle of the shop. She was weeping silently, unconsciously, the large tears rolling down her round florid face. Her hands were crossed in her lap. Her eyes were wide open, and her whole appearance that of one in helpless despair. When she saw her visitor come in, she rose with a start, brushed the tears out of her eyes, and cried, seizing the hand of the other woman and pressing her down on a chair: "I am so glad to see you, Mrs. Pearse! It is so good of you to come! I am in sore distress and trouble!" "There, dear!" said the visitor in soothing tones. "Don't take on like that. All may yet be well. What does the doctor say about the poor soul?" "All will never be well again for her. The doctor says she is not likely to see another day, short as these nights are. O my--O my heart! but it grieves me to think of her going, and she so young. And to think of what a pretty girl she must have been; to think of how handsome she must have been before the trouble, whatever it is, came upon her and wore her to a shadow." "And I suppose she has not opened her mind to you even yet about this trouble?" The question was not asked out of idle curiosity, but from deep-seated interest in the subject of the conversation. For this was not the first or the tenth talk these two kindly friends had about the sick woman upstairs. "She has said no more to me than the dead. My reading of it is, that she made a bad match against the will of her people, and that her husband deserted her and her child." "And what about the boy? Does the poor sufferer know how bad she is?" "Yes; she knows that there's not any hope, and the doctor told me to be prepared for the worst, and that she might die in a couple of hours. Poor soul! I shall be sorry!" Mrs. Pemberton threw her apron over her head and wept and sobbed; Mrs. Pearse weeping the while, for company. When Mrs. Pemberton was able to control herself she drew down her apron and said: