"If I had him to nurse and feed up and take care of, everything would be well," she used to say; "but now I fear that he will stay at Angry, only to die there. I wish he would go back to Warwickshire and grow strong. I could bear absence, silence, anything, if I had not this dreadful fear." "Except separation," I suggested. "Only death could bring that about," said Esther solemnly. "If he were to leave me, and I were to hear nothing from him, I should know that he was dead." The trouble that was brooding over us seemed to bind us Brandons more closely. The poor boys were always hanging about with wistful faces that spring, wanting to do something to help if they could. They used to come into Pierce's room and sit down with a great parade of not creaking or making noise, and soften their rough young voices to a hoarse whisper as they addressed him. I have seen the old humour flash into Pierce's sunken eyes as he looked at them, humour oddly blent with immense tenderness. Then out of sheer kindness he would send them off fishing or shooting, with an expressed desire for a trout or a quail, for which, when they arrived, he had no appetite. The twins, too, proved themselves little hearts of gold. They would bring in their treasures from garden and woodland to show to Pierce--early primroses, or a group of tall daffodils, or a mass of wild hyacinths;--such things brought to him by his shy little sisters seemed to give him great pleasure. He would stroke their brown heads and tell them to be very good to Aline, and then would watch them fondly while they sat before the fire, their two heads bent over one book, till he fell asleep. At Easter Freda came for a week. We thought she would have waited for the end, though that was not a thought we put into words for each other, but it seemed strange that she could not stay by Pierce as long as we kept his precious body on the earth. Yet she seemed to care as much as any of us, and hardly left Pierce's room during that week. "I suppose it is the child," Aline said to me as if she would excuse her. "We can't be expected to understand how a mother's heart drags her back to where her child is. "Yet I should think," I said, "that she might have trusted him to Mrs. Vincent for a while, so that she might stay with Pierce while ... while--" And here I broke off with a sob and went out of the room. But I was present when Freda and Pierce said good-bye, at least for the beginning of their parting. Freda had come in with her hat on, and looked very pale, I noticed, but tearless. She knelt down by Pierce, and I heard her say: "I have to go, darling. You know, darling, that I must go, though it is breaking my heart to leave you now." "I know, Freda," he said, "and it has been good to have had you this week. Good-bye, my dearest! When I am gone you will have two instead of one in that distant country."