for them, struggled for them! It could not, and it must not be. Patty did not sleep that day, though she had been up all night and wanted sleep. She bathed her face and her eyes, and changed her dress, and went back to her husband’s bedside with a kind of fierce determination to hold by him, not to let him die. There was no change in him from what there had been when she left him, and the nurse was half offended by her intrusion. “I assure you, ma’am, I know my duties,” she said, “and you’ll break down next if you don’t mind. Go, there’s a dear, and get some sleep; you can’t nurse him both by night and day. And there’s no change, nothing to make you anxious.” “You are sure of that, nurse?” “Quite sure. He’s quite quiet and comfortable, so far as I can see.” “But they say he has no constitution,” said Patty, gazing into the woman’s face for comfort. “Well, Mrs. Piercey; but most times it’s the strongest man with whom it goes hardest,” the nurse said. And this gave Patty great consolation; it was the only comfort she had. It was one of those dicta which she had heard often both about children and men, and therefore she received it the more willingly. “It goes harder with the strong ones.” That was the very commonest thing to say, and perhaps it was true. The old women often knew better than the doctors, she said to herself. Indeed, there was in her mind a far greater confidence in such a deliverance than in anything the doctors could say. And nothing could exceed the devotion with which poor Gervase was nursed. His wife was by his side night and day. She never tired--never wanted repose; was always ready; the most careful and anxious of nurses. “He’s much better to-day, don’t you think?” was her greeting to the doctor when he came. And Dr. Bryant said afterwards that Mrs. Piercey looked as if she would have flown at his throat when he looked grave. She could not bear to be contradicted or checked in her hopes. And every day she went downstairs and assured Sir Giles that his son would soon be better. “We can’t expect it to pass in a day,” she said, “for it is a very serious attack.” “And he has no stamina, no stamina; we always knew it--we were always told that,” said the old gentleman. Mrs. Piercey looked fiercely at her father-in-law, too. She could not bear to hear this repeated. “Dear papa,” she said, “it comes hardest always on the strongest men.” “God bless you, my dear!” cried old Sir Giles, falling a-sobbing, as was his wont when his mind was disturbed, “I believe that’s true.”