"She is not in pain when she lies, but it comes on if she exerts herself. Sometimes she walks out, but not often. She is so patient--so anxious to make the best of things; lying there, as she is often obliged to do, for hours, and going without any little thing she may want, because she will not disturb the servant from her work to get it. I don't think anyone was ever blessed with so patient and sweet a temper." And when Mildred entered and saw the bright expectancy of the well-remembered face, the eager hands held out to welcome her, she knew that they were true sisters from that hour. The invalid drew down her face to her own flushed one. "I am so grieved," she whispered, the tears rising in her earnest eyes; "this is one of my worst days, and I am unable to rise to welcome you." "Do not think of it," answered Mildred; "I am glad to be here to wait upon you, I am used to nursing; I think it is my _specialite_," she added, with one of her old sunny smiles. "I will try and nurse you into health before I go back again." "You shall make the tea, and do all those things, now you are here, Mildred," interposed Peter. "I am as awkward as an owl when I have to attempt anything, and Lucy lies and laughs at me." "Which is to be my room?" asked Mildred. "I will go and take my things off, and come down to hear all the news of the old place." "The blue room," said Mrs. Peter. "You will find little Lucy----" "Your own old room, Mildred," interposed Peter. "Lucy, my dear, when Mildred left home the room was not blue, but a sort of dirty yellow." Mildred went and came down again, bringing the children with her, little orderly things; steady Lucy quite like a mother to her baby brother. Mildred made acquaintance with them, and she and Peter gossiped away to their hearts' content; the one telling the news of the "old place," and its changes, the other listening. "We think Lucy so much like you," Peter observed in the course of the evening, alluding to his little daughter. "Like me!" repeated Mildred. "It strikes us all. William never sees her but he thinks of you. He says we ought to have named her 'Mildred.'" "_His_ daughters are not named Mildred, either of them," she answered, hastily--an old sore sensation, that she had been striving so long to bury, becoming very rife within her. "His wife chose their names--not he. She has a will of her own, and likes to exercise it." "How do you get on with William's wife?" "Not very well. She and Lucy did not take to each other at first, and I suppose never will. She is quite a fine lady now; and, indeed, always was, to my thinking; and William's wealth enables them to live in a style very different from what we can do. So Mrs. Arkell looks down upon us. We are invited to a grand, formal dinner there once a year, and that is about all our intercourse." "A grand, formal dinner!" echoed Mildred. "For you!"