Evidently she thought herself on the hot boat taking the lemonade Paul had brought her. With a cry of delight, Miss Hansford exclaimed: “Thank God! It’s the first word she has spoken. She shall have the lemonade if it kills her!” She was down the stairs in a moment, leaving Paul alone and standing awkwardly in the middle of the room, wondering if he, too, ought not to go. Elithe decided for him. Lifting up her hand and reaching it towards him she said: “You are Mr. Ralston and I am Elithe. Don’t you remember?” She was introducing herself to him, and he took her hand and kept it while he replied: “Yes, I am Paul Ralston, and you are Elithe. I am glad you are better. You have been very ill.” “Ill!” Elithe repeated, with a startled look in her eyes, which went rapidly around the room, taking in all its appointments and their meaning. “I didn’t know I was ill. How long is it, and where is auntie?” “Here, child,” and Miss Hansford appeared with the lemonade, finding Paul holding Elithe’s hand in one of his and smoothing her hair with the other. He was a natural nurse, and she looked and seemed so like a child in her helplessness that he caressed her as if she were one, and held the glass to her lips while she drank eagerly. She was decidedly better, but a good deal bewildered with regard to her illness, which she could not understand. “Don’t try to now. We’ll talk of it by and by when you are stronger,” Paul said, as he bade her good-bye and went below, followed by Miss Hansford. During the days and nights she had watched by Elithe the little girl had crept a long ways into her heart, melting the frost of years and awakening in her all the instincts of loving motherhood. “I never b’lieved I could care for anybody as I do for her,” she said to Paul. “Why, only think that I, an old maid of sixty-five, who never had an offer, and only now and then a beau home from spellin’ school or singin’ school, should actually feel as if I was several mothers. I don’t see through it.” Paul laughed merrily at her idea of several mothers, and then went to telegraph the glad news to Samona that Elithe was better. This was his third telegram, for after he knew Miss Hansford’s letter telling of Elithe’s illness must have reached there, he had sent a message every day, knowing how anxious the family would be. Miss Hansford had tried not to alarm them, and had only said Elithe was worn out with the journey and sick in bed from its effects. The telegrams, “Is about the same,” or “No worse,” frightened them more than the letter, and if the prayers in Oak City for her recovery were fervent and heartfelt, they were doubly so in Samona and at Deep Gulch.