'It's enough to vex a saint,' Martha went on, 'let alone me, just when the girl was beginning to leave off fretting, and to take hold a little. I won't have it done, and so I tell you, Willie.' 'I wouldn't harm Hildred,' I said sorrowfully, 'but she and I can't forget; after what grandmother said before she died, and all. You mind that, Martha.' Martha gave a sort of moan. 'It's only that he's more faithful than any of us,' said Hildred. 'Well, let him be faithful by himself. I won't have him coming upsetting everything, and you breaking your thread, Hildred, and going on like that. I'm ashamed of you.' Hildred did look so pale for a time after this, that I saw Martha was right in part, and that I ought not to have spoken when there was nothing real to tell. She was rough-spoken, was poor Martha, but she was a just woman. No one ever could have a better neighbour, as we proved that next winter. It was a hard winter. The snow came early, and lay long; the river, for the first time in many years, was frozen over. I suppose I noticed the cold more for my father's sake. All the autumn he had been ailing, but he would not give in as long as he could keep about. When Christmas came he was lying between life and death in a rheumatic fever. We never thought he would see another spring, but somehow he struggled through it, and by March he was downstairs again, changed, and aged, and bent, but still a wonder, even to the doctor himself. Martha Clifford and Hildred nursed him as if they had been daughters of his own, and he was 'ill to nurse,' as the old women say. Martha never got a word of thanks from him for all her goodness, but sometimes he laid his hand kindly on Hildred's head, and smiled at her. It was pretty to see her trying to cheer him as he sat, hour after hour, with his eyes fixed gloomily on the fire, beating his stick slowly on the floor and saying nothing. It was a hard thing for him to believe, what his stiff aching limbs yet told him too plainly, that he would never be fit for any work again. Hildred did not lose patience, even with his darkest moods. Perhaps she guessed that they were darker still whenever she was away from him. One wet blowy evening in that same month of March, I chanced to be kept much later than usual at Furzy Nook. Long before I got home it had grown dark, though I made as much haste as I could, thinking that my father's fire would have gone out, and that he would be tired of being by himself. But when I lifted the latch, the firelight was shining cheerfully through the room, and Hildred sat on the wooden stool at my father's feet. I remember standing still for a moment to watch them. My father's head was bent down, and he was talking to her. Hildred sat looking up at him, her chin on her hand, and the fire lighted both their faces.