One day, while she was lying with the fever burning brightly in her checks, she said suddenly: 

“Papa, I wish I could do something good for a whole lot of children!”

“What would you like to do, dear?” asked the Commissioner.  “Give them a party?”

“Oh, I don’t mean those kind.  I mean poor children who haven’t homes, and aren’t loved and cared for as I am.  I tell you what, papa!”

“What, my own child?”

“If I shouldn’t get well, I’ll leave them you—­not give you, but just lend you, for you must come to mamma and me when you die too.  If you can find time, wouldn’t you do something to help them, if I ask you, papa?”

“Hush, hush dear, dear child,” said the Commissioner, holding her hot little hand against his cheek; “you’ll get well real soon, and you and I will see what we can do for them together.”

But in whatsoever paths of benevolence, thus vaguely premeditated, the Commissioner might tread, he was not to have the company of his beloved.  That night the little frail body grew suddenly too tired to struggle further, and Georgia’s exit was made from the great stage when she had scarcely begun to speak her little piece before the footlights.  But there must be a stage manager who understands.  She had given the cue to the one who was to speak after her.

A week after she was laid away, the Commissioner reappeared at the office, a little more courteous, a little paler and sterner, with the black frock-coat hanging a little more loosely from his tall figure.

His desk was piled with work that had accumulated during the four heartbreaking weeks of his absence.  His chief clerk had done what he could, but there were questions of law, of fine judicial decisions to be made concerning the issue of patents, the marketing and leasing of school lands, the classification into grazing, agricultural, watered, and timbered, of new tracts to be opened to settlers.

The Commissioner went to work silently and obstinately, putting back his grief as far as possible, forcing his mind to attack the complicated and important business of his office.  On the second day after his return he called the porter, pointed to a leather-covered chair that stood near his own, and ordered it removed to a lumber-room at the top of the building.  In that chair Georgia would always sit when she came to the office for him of afternoons.

As time passed, the Commissioner seemed to grow more silent, solitary, and reserved.  A new phase of mind developed in him.  He could not endure the presence of a child.  Often when a clattering youngster belonging to one of the clerks would come chattering into the big business-room adjoining his little apartment, the Commissioner would steal softly and close the door.  He would always cross the street to avoid meeting the school-children when they came dancing along in happy groups upon the sidewalk, and his firm mouth would close into a mere line.