and had sent in their claim upon the underwriters.  Now that he was gone for ever, she first felt a yearning, longing love for the kind cousin, the dear friend, the sympathizing protector, whom she should never see again;—­first felt a passionate desire to show him his child, whom she had hitherto rather craved to have all to herself—­her own sole possession.  Her grief was, however, noiseless and quiet—­rather to the scandal of Mrs Wilson who bewailed her stepson as if he and she had always lived together in perfect harmony, and who evidently thought it her duty to burst into fresh tears at every strange face she saw; dwelling on his poor young widow’s desolate state, and the helplessness of the fatherless child, with an unction as if she liked the excitement of the sorrowful story.

So passed away the first days of Alice’s widowhood.  By and by things subsided into their natural and tranquil course.  But, as if the young creature was always to be in some heavy trouble, her ewe-lamb began to be ailing, pining, and sickly.  The child’s mysterious illness turned out to be some affection of the spine, likely to affect health but not to shorten life—­at least, so the doctors said.  But the long, dreary suffering of one whom a mother loves as Alice loved her only child, is hard to look forward to.  Only Norah guessed what Alice suffered; no one but God knew.

And so it fell out, that when Mrs Wilson, the elder, came to her one day, in violent distress, occasioned by a very material diminution in the value of the property that her husband had left her—­a diminution which made her income barely enough to support herself, much less Alice—­the latter could hardly understand how anything which did not touch health or life could cause such grief; and she received the intelligence with irritating composure.  But when, that afternoon, the little sick child was brought in, and the grandmother—­who, after all, loved it well—­began a fresh moan over her losses to its unconscious ears—­saying how she had planned to consult this or that doctor, and to give it this or that comfort or luxury in after years, but that now all chance of this had passed away—­Alice’s heart was touched, and she drew near to Mrs Wilson with unwonted caresses, and, in a spirit not unlike to that of Ruth, entreated that, come what would, they might remain together.  After much discussion in succeeding days, it was arranged that Mrs Wilson should take a house in Manchester, furnishing it partly with what furniture she had, and providing the rest with Alice’s remaining two hundred pounds.  Mrs Wilson was herself a Manchester woman, and naturally longed to return to her native town; some connexions of her own, too, at that time required lodgings, for which they were willing to pay pretty handsomely.  Alice undertook the active superintendence and superior work of the household; Norah—­willing, faithful Norah—­offered to cook, scour, do anything in short, so that she might but remain with them.