It is because this tale is called "Louie's Married Life," that I shall give you my songs. They were all written for Ronald to sing to the accompaniment of his guitar; and if it had not been for Ronald, I hardly think that they would ever have been written at all. For if I had married somebody else (as I nearly did, once upon a time), this little flame of song which is in me would have been extinguished altogether, and I should have become the dullest woman in the world. These songs are a part of my life as a wife. I daresay, however, that many people have wasted a great deal of pity on the wife of Ronald Hepburne; and if they do not openly point at the lines on my forehead and the crow's feet at the corners of my eyes, they convey by looks and tones their deep distress on seeing my altered appearance. I admit that they have every possible right to indulge in polite lamentations. Never having been a buxom woman, I had not much flesh to lose; and nursing through long days, and watching through longer nights, have left upon me certain traces which are not likely to be effaced, even in this present time of peace. When I wrote the foregoing little song, it was early in an April morning; the only sunbeams that I could see were shining on brick walls, blackened with smoke; and the only sky that I could see was a patch of pale blue above the chimney-tops. But, as I lifted my head from my pillow, a feeling of unutterable gratitude thrilled me through and through: it was the last night that we should ever spend in that dreary London room, and Ronald had been sleeping soundly and long. Weeping may endure for a night (and with me it had endured for many nights), but joy cometh in the morning. I thought of all the other watchers in the crowded houses around me, of mothers counting the hours by the beds of sick children, of wives who had agonised as I had done and prayed as I had prayed; and then, as I looked at Ronald's face, in the dim dawn, I began to recall the note of an early bird in my old country home—and so the song was made. We had only been married six months when Ronald was stricken with fever. First a slight cold, a few days of languor and depression, and then, before I had had time to realise the danger, he was face to face with death. So the battle for life was fought and won in the dark chamber of a London lodging, and on that April morning I was tasting the first sweets of the great deliverance. But when with a great effort he rose from the bed whereon he had lain for weeks, I almost feared that the conflict was about to begin again. He had never answered to the popular notion of a fine, handsome man (and I must needs say here that I have no fancy for burly men), yet I had not thought it possible that he could become so fragile, so spectre-like, as he now appeared. Mine is, I suppose, a transparent character, for Ronald always reads my thoughts at a glance; and as his eyes met mine, he gave me a reassuring smile.