“I thought it the sweetest thing that ever happened to me. That was my first step along a road that you have strewn with flowers ever since. I can’t thank you, but I never shall forget it.” Christie spoke out fervently, and for an instant her heart shone in her face. Then she checked herself, and, fearing she had said too much, fell to slicing bread with an energetic rapidity which resulted in a cut finger. Dropping the knife, she tried to get her handkerchief, but the blood flowed fast, and the pain of a deep gash made her a little faint. David sprung to help her, tied up the wound, put her in the big chair, held water to her lips, and bathed her temples with a wet napkin; silently, but so tenderly, that it was almost too much for poor Christie. For one happy moment her head lay on his arm, and his hand brushed back her hair with a touch that was a caress: she heard his heart beat fast with anxiety; felt his breath on her cheek, and wished that she might die then and there, though a bread-knife was not a romantic weapon, nor a cut finger as interesting as a broken heart. Kitty’s voice made her start up, and the blissful vision of life, with David in the little house alone, vanished like a bright bubble, leaving the hard reality to be lived out with nothing but a woman’s pride to conceal a woman’s most passionate pain. “It’s nothing: I’m all right now. Don’t say any thing to worry your mother; I’ll put on a bit of court-plaster, and no one will be the wiser,” she said, hastily removing all traces of the accident but her own pale face. [Illustration: “ONE HAPPY MOMENT.”] “Poor Christie, it’s hard that you should go away with a wound like this on the hand that has done so much for us,” said David, as he carefully adjusted the black strip on that forefinger, roughened by many stitches set for him. “I loved to do it,” was all Christie trusted herself to say. “I know you did; and in your own words I can only answer: ‘I don’t know how to thank you, but I never shall forget it.’” And David kissed the wounded hand as gratefully and reverently as if its palm was not hardened by the humblest tasks. If he had only known—ah, if he had only known!—how easily he might repay that debt, and heal the deeper wound in Christie’s heart. As it was, she could only say, “You are too kind,” and begin to shovel tea into the pot, as Kitty came in, as rosy and fresh as the daisies she put in her hair. “Ain’t they becoming?” she asked, turning to David for admiration. “No, thank you,” he answered absently, looking out over her head, as he stood upon the rug in the attitude which the best men will assume in the bosoms of their families. Kitty looked offended, and turned to the mirror for comfort; while Christie went on shovelling tea, quite unconscious what she was about till David said gravely: “Won’t that be rather strong?” “How stupid of me! I always forget that Kitty does not drink tea,” and Christie rectified her mistake with all speed.