She did mind, for she knew now that Beatrice Belknap was her husband’s first choice, but she held it every wife’s duty to obey her husband so far as it was right, and as there was nothing wrong in this proposition she consented without a word, and the baby was named for Beatrice, but familiarly called Trixey, as that pet name suited her better. Of the Beatrice over the sea Theodore never spoke, and his wife never questioned him, and so she knew nothing of her until she woke from sleep and found her there in all her fresh beauty and bright plumage, which seemed so out of place in that humble room. Of course she was embarrassed and confused, but she would not apologize, except as she spoke of the life of privation they had led in that heathen land. “And yet there was much to make me happy,” she said. “I knew we were doing God’s work,—which somebody must do,—and when some poor creatures blessed us for coming to tell them the story of Jesus, I was so glad that I had gone to them, and my trials seemed as nothing. And then, there was Theo, always the same good, true husband to me.” She said this a little defiantly, as if to assure Beatrice that the heart, which once might have beaten for her, was now wholly loyal to another. And Bee accepted it sweetly, but had her own opinion on the subject still. “Yes, the Mr. Morton I used to know could never be anything but kind to one he loved well enough to make his wife,” she said; and then, by way of turning the conversation from Theodore to something else, she asked: “Were you sick all the time you were there?” “Yes, most of the time. My children were born so fast,—four in five years. I lost a noble boy between Mamie and baby Eddie; that almost killed me, and I’ve never been the same since. There is consumption in our family far back, and I fear I have inherited it. My cough is terrible at times, but I hope much from Vermont air and Vermont nursing. Oh, I have longed so for the old home at the foot of the mountain, for some water from the well, for mother, and to lie on her bed as I used to when I was a child, and had the sick-headache.” Her eyes filled with tears as she said this, and she leaned wearily back in her chair, while Bee involuntarily laid her soft, warm hand upon the thin, wasted one where the wedding-ring sat so loosely. Just then the door opened and Theodore Morton came in, the same Beatrice had heard at the missionary meeting, the same with whom she had strolled through the Kentucky woods and on the shore of Quinsigamond Pond. He knew her at once, but nothing in his face or voice betrayed any consciousness of the past, if he felt it. He met her naturally and cordially, said he was very glad to see her, that it was kind in her to find them out, and then passed on to his sick wife, on whose head he laid his hand caressingly, asking if it ached as hard as ever, or if she was feeling a little better.