Then there is a long, dark blank before the next picture appears, and I see him sitting in a big arm-chair at the dining-room fire. His back is cushioned, and a shepherd-tartan plaid is round his shoulders, the ends folded across his knees. My mother is writing letters to his dictation on a small bureau, which has been placed near his chair. I am playing with a Noah's Ark, marshalling the animals in pairs on the rug; and when my mother goes out of the room to the little office adjoining, I leave my toys and stand at his knee, looking up to a face which to me seems very white and pinched. A long, thin hand is placed on my curly head, and with difficulty he bends down and kisses me. I wonder who has been unkind to him, for I see a tear trickling down his cheek, and it falls unheeded on his plaid. I cannot focus him in my mind's eye in any subsequent event, though I remember perfectly the old doctor with the foxskin cap and the clattering clogs, and the smell of 'Kendal brown' he always left behind. Then a day came when the window-blinds were pulled down and all the rooms were darkened; when Betty's voice was, even to my childish ears, low and husky; when my mother cuddled me in a tight embrace, and a wet, wet cheek was laid against mine. Oh, how she trembled and sobbed! I felt bewildered and unhappy, and I remember putting my wee, helpless arms round her neck and asking her why she was crying. She told me that daddy had gone away--away to heaven; and when I asked if he wouldn't come back to us again, she said, 'No, no,' and her embrace tightened, and she wept afresh. In a short time the door was hesitatingly opened, and Betty came noiselessly in with a book in her hand which I had often seen her read. She stood behind my mother's chair with her tear-stained face turned away, and her red hand on my mother's shoulder; but she didn't speak. Then she came round, and, 'hunkering' down beside us, opened her book and in a low voice began to read. I often think it is strange how indelibly imprinted on some childish minds are little incidents of long ago--little glimpses of landscape, snatches of songs, details here and there of passing events. Not that I consider the foregoing a little incident. To me it was at the time of outstanding moment, and even yet in my retrospect of life it looms large and prominent; but, though I have often endeavoured to recall Betty's ministrations on this occasion, all I can remember is that when she came to the verse, 'I will not leave you comfortless: I will come to you,' she spoke the words without referring to her Bible, and she repeated them, the while looking with big, hopeful eyes up to my mother's face. And my mother smiled through her tears; and, stroking Betty's strong brown hair, she called her 'Betty the Comforter.'