Vesty spoke to me so softly, as if her head were turned, or she were wandering in a dream. "When Gurdon had anything that anybody needed, and they asked him for it, he always gave it them. So they asked him for his life--and he gave that!" Notely, on recovering consciousness, had been carried to his house at the Neck: by the next morning they had his mother with him; he was in a fever. Would Vesty remember now the promise she had asked of Mrs. Garrison? At all events, the sick man babbled deliriously of past days, had fallen from the rock once more, and would have Vesty to nurse him: "where," asking ever, "is Vesty?" Mrs. Garrison herself went to her, pleading his pain and danger. Vesty came. "Hello! we're saved!--the Vesty!" cried Notely, whose fever had been plunging him in cold sea-waves, his voice a feeble echo of its old gay tone, as he put up his hand to her. So ashy and sunken was his face, Vesty took him on her arm as she would her child; he fell asleep. "Vesty stops the pain--no one lifts me like Vesty--sing, Vesty!" from pathetic lips and wandering blue eyes that would die if one recalled them to their sorrow. "Only stay," said Mrs. Garrison. "His life hangs upon it. Surely you are not afraid to have your child with me?" Her heart was full of tenderness for the girl. "I would die rather than anything should happen to your child, Vesty," she cried, with a sincere impulse. Vesty lifted those Basin eyes. "Oh, he is not old enough yet to understand my worldliness," said Mrs. Garrison, with bitter lips. For, from entrusting the child at first to her servants, while Vesty was in the sick-room, Mrs. Garrison had grown to have a jealous care for him herself. He had taken an occasion, and he had conquered her. When she pleased him he dimpled and gave her, on appeal, an ostentatious kiss, composed wholly of noise and vanity. When she first displeased him he had tried conclusions with her by unhesitatingly administering a slap on the face. Mrs. Garrison, the select and haughty, tingling from this direct Basin blow, watched the flame die out of the baby's eyes, in astonishment, not in anger. The blow felt good to her. Vesty treated her, though unconsciously, from such a height. "My darling," she said sorrowfully, lifting the child in her arms, "would you hurt me, when I love you so?" A bit of sugar sealed the reconciliation: while he devoured it little Gurdon leaned his head in tender remorse upon Mrs. Garrison's neck. She had handsome eyes--for him, full only of love and longing--and he saw strange tears in them. He never treated her again to corporeal punishment; while she, on her part, indulged him fully. The attachment was so marked between them that he would, when he was well and had dined, very cheerfully leave Vesty for her society, to Vesty's secret chagrin and Mrs. Garrison's beating heart of joy.