She nodded brightly, and, opening the little door of the house, passed into the single lower room which served as kitchen and dining-room in one. Beyond the disorderly table, from which the remains of dinner had not yet been cleared away, Molly was lying on a hard wooden lounge covered with strips of faded calico. Her abundant flaxen hair hung in lusterless masses upon her shoulders, and the soiled cotton wrapper she wore was torn open at the throat as if she had clutched it in a passion of childish petulance. At Maria's entrance she started and looked up angrily from her dejected attitude. "I can't see any visitors--I'm not fit!" she cried. Marie drew forward a broken split--bottomed chair and sat down beside the lounge. "I'm not a visitor, Molly," she answered; "and I've come to see if I can't make you a little easier. Won't you let me fix you comfortably? Why, you poor child, your hands are as hot as fire!" "I'm hot all over," returned Molly peevishly; "and I'm sick--I'm as sick as I can be. Will won't believe it, but the doctor says so." "Will does believe it, and it worries him terribly. Here, sit up and let me bathe your face and hands in cold water. Doesn't that feel better?" "A little," admitted Molly, when Maria had found a towel and dried her hands. "And now I'm going to comb the tangles out of your hair. What lovely hair! It is the colour of ripe corn." A pleased flush brightened Molly's face, and she resigned herself easily to Maria's willing services. "There's a comb over there on that shelf under the mirror," she said. "Will broke half the teeth out of it the other day, and it pulls my hair out when I use it." "Then I'll bring you one of mine. You must be careful of these curls. They're too pretty to treat roughly. Do I hurt you?" As she spoke, a bright strand of the girl's hair twisted about one of her rings, and after hesitating an instant she drew the circle from her finger and laid it in Molly's lap. "There. I haven't any money, so that's to buy you medicine and food," she said. "It cost a good deal once, I fancy." "Diamonds!" gasped Molly, with a cry of rapture. Her hand closed over the ring with a frantic clutch; then slipping it on, she lay watching the stone sparkle in the last sunbeams. A colour had bloomed suddenly in her face, and her eyes shone with a light as brilliant as that of the jewel at which she gazed. "And you had--others?" she asked in a kind of sacred awe.