Throughout the whole of that dark day Milly’s mother never left the cottage; and when her husband, weary and dispirited, returned at nightfall, she could scarcely nerve herself to question him lest some word of his should add another stab to her already sorely wounded heart.  When ten o’clock struck, and Abraham Lord laid his hand on the key to shoot the lock for the night, he burst into tears, and turning to his wife, said:  ‘Never, my lass, wi’ Milly on th’ wrong side’; and for months the parents slept with an unbarred door.

* * * * *

‘You have a remarkable patient in Milly Lord,’ said Dr. Franks to Nurse West one morning.

’I have indeed, doctor.  I never met with another like her in all my seven years’ experience.’

‘Does she talk much?’

’At times.  But I should call her a silent child; at least, she does not talk like other children.  When she does talk it is to make some quaint remark, or to ask some strange question.’

‘Ah,’ said the doctor, ’she’s just asked me one.  I referred her to you and the chaplain.  Religion, you know, is not much in my line.  But for all that, I must own it was a perplexing question.’

‘Might I ask what it was, doctor?’

’Oh! she asked if I thought Jesus was sent here to suffer pain in order that God might find out what pain was; and if so, was it not queer that God should allow so much pain to exist.  There now, nurse, you have a problem.  By the way, do you think the child knows the limb has to be amputated?’

‘She has guessed as much, doctor.’

‘Does she seem to fear the operation?’

’Not at all.  She talks as though it had to be.  Do you think it will be successful?’

Dr. Franks shrugged his shoulders, uttering no word by way of reply.

‘I should not like Milly to slip from us,’ continued the nurse.

’Nor should I. We’ll keep her if we can, and if she’ll only help us with a good heart we may possibly manage to pull her through.’

And with a mirthless laugh the doctor turned on his heel, removing, when unobserved, his spectacles and wiping the moisture from them and from his eyes.

From the day that Milly entered the great infirmary, the charm of her childhood laid its spell upon all who came near her.  Not only was the gloomy ward brighter for her presence, but patients and nurses were infected with her strange personality and undefinable influence.  Even the doctors lingered a moment longer at her bedside, looking pensively into the light of those eyes whose fires had been kindled under sunny skies, and at the beauty of that face, kissed into loveliness by the wandering winds that played around Rehoboth heights.