"Come," said the doctor in a cheerful tone, "you have had a famous sleep. You are better; and now you must take this;" and he put a strong restorative between my father's white lips. "Take me away--_mother_!" I said. I could not contain myself. She led me as far as the door. I do not think she said a word; but she herself returned to the room. I rushed up to my own room, and there I flung myself on my bed and cried as though my very heart would break. Oh, shadow, shadow of my own mother, were you really angry with me then? Or did you, in the light of God's Presence, understand too well what love really meant ever to be angry any more? For everything that was not love, that was not gratitude towards the new mother who had come into my life, had vanished for ever and ever while I knelt that night by my father's bedside. By-and-by, in the course of that day, I kissed her and told her something of what I felt. She understood, as I think she always did understand even my thoughts before they were uttered. And so I turned over a new page in life, and my father was spared to us after all. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ The End. End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Dumps - A Plain Girl, by L.T. Meade