"This is the last time that he ever saw me; but I know that he remembered these parting words, and did not altogether live the rest of his life in vain. Two years after this, whilst shooting in Africa, he was attacked by cholera, and died. During his short illness I never left him. When I came to his bedside he was insensible through the pain of the first attack. The case was quite hopeless; but I was able to save him further suffering, and he never regained consciousness. His body was embalmed, sent to England, and buried in the family grave at Somerville. "I had spent the greater part of these two years at Aphar. Vera no longer needed my help. She was learning from her friend the joy of living for others. Agnes still yearned after the little orphan children she had left, and so contagious is true enthusiasm, that unconsciously she infected Vera with the desire to help her in this work. One day a sad case came under her notice. One of the Canons of L---- Cathedral was lunching at Somerville, and the conversation drifted to ’Workhouse Management,’ a pet subject of the Canon, who was on the Board of Guardians. "’It is very fortunate,’ Agnes said to him, ’that you who take a real interest in the poor are on the Board; so often these matters are left in the hands of those who care for little but their own interest.’ "’I hope,’ he replied, ’that I have been able to do something, but under the present system the work is enough to make any man’s heart bleed. For the old people we can do something, but for the little children it is terrible. Once let them get into the workhouse, and seven out of ten are ruined for life.’ "’I know,’ said Agnes, tears coming into her eyes. ’It is terrible! Herded as they are together, without love, or personal sympathy, the evil which is always surrounding them works like leaven. Do you know, Vera,’ she continued, turning to her friend, ’that the little things when they came to me at the Orphanage often did not know how to kiss. Oh! it made my heart ache, trying to teach a little girl of seven to kiss me.’ "’Yet these are not the most painful cases, to my mind,’ the Canon said. ’Only last week two children, such dear little things, were brought in by the relieving officer. Their mother, a widow, had for four years struggled hard to support them, but work for which she was unfitted, at last brought on consumption. When she died there was nothing for it but to bring them to the pauper school. They will now have to be separated from each other. The boy, who is a plucky little fellow of nine, has always looked after his younger sister, and when he heard that she must be taken from him I never saw such abject misery on a child’s face. "She sha’n’t go," he said. "I promised mother to look after her--she sha’n’t go!" And the two poor little lonely things clung together and had to be separated when they fell asleep. I would not let the officer tear them apart.’