"Dr Edward, don't mind what Susan says," said Nettie. "It is very kind of you to come after everything---- If you would only tell the people not to take any notice, but just to let us go on as usual. They all want to be kind, you know--they keep coming, and asking what they can do; and you understand very well there is nothing to do," said Nettie, with a little pride. "We are just as we were before--nothing is changed: one does not like to be unkind, but nobody needs to do anything. We shall get along all the same." "So it seems, indeed," said Dr Rider, with irrepressible bitterness; "all the same! But, indeed, I came specially to ask what my sister-in-law meant to do," continued the doctor, bent on one last appeal. "Now that you are left to yourself, Mrs Rider, what do you think of doing? Of course you must have some plans about the children and your future life?" Mrs Fred looked up at him with momentary alarm and dismay. She did not know what the question meant, but a certain vague terror seized her. It seemed to imply somehow that she was now to be left to her own resources. She gave a certain gasp of appeal to "Nettie!" and took refuge once more in her handkerchief. The doctor was desperate--he had no mercy in him. "Nettie! always Nettie!" cried the young man. "And is it true, Nettie--is it all the same? Are you always to go on toiling for the miserable comforts of other people? What is to become of us? Have you sold yourself to this fate?" Nettie laid down the little black frock out of her laborious hands. "You have been up all night, Dr Edward," she said, with a certain tenderness, looking at his agitated face; "you are tired out and sick at the heart. I know it makes you say things you would not say; but after all, you know, except poor Fred, whom none of you think of, everything is the very same. I cannot make it different--nothing can make it different. There is Susan plain enough to be seen--and there are the children. Sometimes it has come into my mind," said Nettie, "that as I shall never be able to afford a _very_ good education for the children, it would be better to take them out to the colony again, where they might get on better than here. But it is a dreadful long voyage; and we have no near friends there, or anywhere else: and," concluded the steadfast creature, who had dropped these last words from her lips sentence by sentence, as if eager to impress upon her own mind the arguments against that proceeding--"and," said Nettie, with wistful pathetic honesty, not able to deny the real cause of the reluctance altogether, "I don't seem to have the heart for it now."