“‘Your sister is very sick,’ he replied, ‘but your coming will do her good. She keeps asking for you. I arrived yesterday, starting as soon as I received your brother’s telegram. Johnnie is nearly distracted, and nothing but my telling him I was sure you would prefer to have him remain at home, was of the least avail to keep him from coming with me. “All this he told me while we waited in the reception-room for the keys to our apartments. “‘It is very crowded here,’ he said, ‘but by a little engineering I believe you are all comfortably provided for. Your room especially,’ and he nodded to me, ‘is the most desirable in the building.’ “I did not then know he had given it up to me, going himself into a little hot attic chamber. Kind, generous Richard, you are a great comfort to me these dreadful days. As he had said, my own room was every way desirable, but I only gave it at first a hasty glance, so anxious was I to get to Margaret. She knew I had come, and was asking continually for me. How sadly she was changed from the Margaret who stood upon the piazza and said good-by one morning last June. The long curls were all brushed back, and the blue eyes looked so large, so unnaturally bright, as they turned eagerly to me, and yet I liked her face better than ever before. There was less of self stamped upon it, and more of kindly interest in others. “‘Dora, darling sister,’ was all she said, as she wound her arms about my neck, but never since my childhood had she called me by so endearing a title, and I felt springing up in my heart a love mightier than any I had ever felt for her, while with it came a keen remorse for the harsh things written against my dying sister. “I knew she was dying; not that instant, perhaps, but that soon, very soon, she would be gone, for there was upon her face the same pinched look I had seen on father and Robin just before the great destroyer came. “‘Dora,’ she whispered at last, ‘I am so glad you are here. I was afraid I might never see you again, and I wanted so much to tell you how sorry I am for the past. I did not make your home with me as happy as I might. Forgive me, Dora. I worried you and John so much. He says I never did, but I know better. I’ve thought it all over, lying here, and I know you cannot be so sorry to have me die as I should if it were you.’ “I tried to stop her,—tried to say that I had been happy with her,—but she would not listen, and talked on, telling me next of the little life which had looked for half an hour upon this world, and then floated away to the next. “‘I called it Dora for you,’ she said, ‘for something told me that I should die, and I thought you might love baby better if she bore your name. But I am glad she died; it makes your burden less: for Dora, you will be my children’s mother,—you will care for them.’