"Now, Rymer, my poor fellow, couldn't you--_couldn't_ you make a bit of an effort to live? To please me: I knew your father, mind. It can't be right that you should die." "It must be right; perhaps it is well. I can truly say with old Jacob that few and evil have the days of my life been. Nothing but disappointment has been my lot here; struggle upon struggle, pain upon pain, sorrow upon sorrow. I think my merciful Father will remember it in the last great account." * * * * * He died at five o'clock in the morning. Lee told us of it when he brought up the letters at breakfast-time. The Squire let fall his knife and fork. "It's a shame and a sin, though, Johnny, that sons should inflict this cruel sorrow upon their parents," he said later. "Rymer has been brought down to the grave by his son before his hair was grey. I wonder how _their_ accounts will stand at the great reckoning?" III. HESTER REED'S PILLS. We were at our other and chief home, Dyke Manor: and Tod and I were there for the short Easter holidays, which were shorter in those days than they are in these. It was Easter Tuesday. The Squire had gone riding over to old Jacobson's with Tod. I, having nothing else to do, got the mater to come with me for a practice on the church organ; and we were taking the round home again through the village, Church Dykely. Easter was very late that year. It was getting towards the end of April: and to judge by the weather, it might have been the end of May, the days were so warm and glorious. In passing the gate of George Reed's cottage, Mrs. Todhetley stopped. "How are the babies, Hester?" Hester Reed, sunning her white cap and clean cotton gown in the garden, the three elder children around, watering the beds with a doll's watering-pot, and a baby hiding its face on her shoulder, dropped a curtsy as she answered-- "They be but poorly, ma'am, thank you. Look up, Susy," turning the baby's face upwards to show it: and a pale mite of a face it was, with sleepy eyes. "For a day or two past they've not seemed the thing; and they be both cross." "I should think their teeth are troubling them, Hester." "Maybe, ma'am. I shouldn't wonder. Hetty, she seems worse than Susy. She's a-lying there in the basket indoors. Would you please spare a minute to step in and look at her, ma'am?" Mrs. Todhetley opened the gate. "I may as well go in and see, Johnny," she said to me in an undertone: "I fear both the children are rather sickly." The other baby, "Hetty," lay in the kitchen in a clothes-basket. It had just the same sort of puny white face as its sister. These two were twins, and about a year old. When they were born, Church Dykely went on finely at Hester Reed, asking her if she would not have had enough with one new child but she must go and set up two.