"I am very sorry," she said quietly, "because everybody will hear it now. But still, if you will let me stay a little longer to take care of Dot, I would rather do it. I should like to be sure that she is taken care of properly, till she is well." "I don't wonder you think I'm not fit to look after her!" "I don't think you are a good nurse," came in reply. "A nurse would be more careful. But, after this, you will never make such a mistake again. And I do think nurse and I have been to blame, leaving out a bottle of poisonous stuff where anybody might get hold of it. In an old medicine bottle too! I can't think how we could! It's a lesson to me as well as to you." Mrs. Cragg gazed at Pattie with troubled eyes. "I've treated you uncommon ill," she said. "But you are sorry now. You will be kinder from to-day, won't you?" asked Pattie, putting her hand into Mrs. Cragg's. "You will try to like me more than you have done?" "And, Pattie, you don't mind—what I've been and told Mrs. Smithers?" "Yes, I do mind. I can't help minding very much. It is a question of my father's good name; and I must mind that. But it is done, and I have to bear it. I shouldn't make things any better by going away, and making dear little Dot unhappy. Only, may I say one thing? I do want very much that Dot should never hear about this. I mean, I want her never to know that you could find out my secret as you did, and that you have broken your promise not to tell. Don't let it come to her ears." Mrs. Cragg broke into almost a laugh. "I should have thought it would be me, not you, to want that," she said. "And Dot's such a baby!" "But she understands. Dot notices everything. And she has to learn what goodness and truth are—through you. She ought to know first what God is—through you. Don't you see what I mean? When I think of my mother, it helps me to know how true and loving God is. How can Dot learn in any other way? I can talk to her, but words don't mean much. Dot ought to learn the lesson—through you—through what you are." Mrs. Cragg's head hung low. This went home like a dagger-thrust. If Dot were to form her childish notion of God from what her mother was, it might well be asked what would be the picture of God in that little mind? Then she burst afresh into tears. Dot's accident had at the first opened Mrs. Cragg's eyes to the reality of what her child was to her; but after tempers and ill-moods had obscured the lesson. Now, far more sharply, a second time it had come. In the hour when she stood, glass in hand, recklessly striving to force between Dot's lips that which would have rendered her a childless woman, and when Pattie had dashed the fearful peril aside, Mrs. Cragg became a changed person.