"So there was no one left but me," repeated the weak child-voice. Matthew rose from the third stair from the bottom, where he had been sitting, and stumbled somewhat blindly into the parlour, where he sat down on the slippery horse-hair sofa. He cleared his throat and blew his nose, and there was an expression on his face which was seldom seen there. "And ther’ was no one left but me." The forlorn weak voice repeating that, moved him strangely. Keturah was the last of the children. There had been six babies before Keturah, and none had lived beyond babyhood. At that moment he forgot how naughty she was, how unregenerate! He only remembered that she used to lay her baby face against his, and that she said "dada" the very first word she spoke. A hundred pretty scenes of her first years flashed into his recollection. His suspicions of the curate were forgotten, and in their place came cold-handed fear to fill his heart with the dread that Keturah might not get well. * * * * * After all, one honest man can recognise another, whether he wear an M.B. waistcoat or a baker’s apron. Anyhow, the curate so far won upon Matthew Moulder that he persuaded him to allow the district nurse to be sent to sit up with Keturah till she was "round the corner," and that the nurse might keep a sharp look out for the recurrence of "the grey look." As Keturah grew better, Matthew made, with his own hands, and at the instigation of the curate, a whole series of fantastic little loaves that she might the better "fancy her tea." "My Dada don’t say much, but I knows now that ’e _do_ like me," said Keturah, in a burst of confidence to Thomas Beames, and Thomas, with that caution for which the Cotswold folk are justly famed, replied— "Mebbe ’e do. But folks when they be growed up be oncommon akard ’times." * * * * * "As for that there doctor," said Mrs. Moulder to a bosom friend, "’e’s the most commandingest gent I ever see. But ’e _do_ get ’is own way. ’E and that curie between them come over Matthew something wonderful; they flaunted their brandy in ’is very face, and ’e never said nothink. They giv’ ’er champang one night, as she was so low, an’ ’e hopened the bottle ’imself. But I will say this for ’em, they always says to Keturah, when they giv’ ’er them liquors, ’Now, remember, you’re never to tech this when you be got well. You’re to be a tea-totaller like your dada.’ An’ Matthew, ’e took ’er to Weston ’is own self. ’E do seem more set up about Keturah than ’e was. But, mark my words, if you wants to call your ’ouse your own, don’t you let that there doctor inside of it, that’s all." Curiously enough, it was Matthew Moulder who was grateful to the doctor. *VI* *MRS. CUSHION’S CHILDREN* She was rather like her name, for she seemed specially created to make life easier for other people.