freed from the tyranny of the mind and its continual running hither and thither at the call of speculation, told them consoling things.  The mother’s flesh, touching the daughter’s, remembered a faint pulse felt long ago and marvelled at this splendid sequel, and lost fear.  Since the past held such a miracle the future mattered nothing.  Existence had justified itself.  The watchers were surprised to hear her sigh of rapture.  The daughter’s flesh, touching the mother’s, remembered life in the womb, that loving organ that by night and day does not cease to embrace its beloved, and was the stronger for tasting again that first best draught of love that the spirit has not yet excelled.

There were footsteps in the corridor, a scuffle and a freshet of giggling; the nurses were going downstairs after the early morning cup of tea in the ward kitchen.  This laughter that sounded so strange because it was so late reminded Ellen of the first New Year’s Eve that she and her mother had spent in Edinburgh.  They had had no friends to first foot them, but they had kept it up very well.  Mrs. Melville had played the piano, and Ellen and she had sung half through the Student’s Song Book, and they had had several glasses of Stone’s Ginger Ale, and there really had been a glow of firelight and holly berry brightness, for Mrs. Melville, birdlike in everything, had a wonderful faculty for bursts of gaiety, pure in tone like a blackbird’s song, which brought out whatever gladness might be latent in any person or occasion.  As twelve chimed out they had stood in front of the chimneypiece mirror and raised their glasses above their heads, singing, “Auld Lang Syne” in time with the dancers on the other side of the wall, who were making such a night of it that several times the house had seemed likely to fall in.

When they had given three cheers and were sipping from their glasses, Mrs. Melville had said drolly:  “Did ye happen to notice my arm when I was lifting it?  Ye did not, ye vain wee thing, ye were looking at yourself all the time.  But I’ll give ye one more chance.”  And she had held it up so that her loose sleeve (she was wearing a very handsome mauve tea-gown bought by Mr. Melville in the temporary delirium of his honeymoon, from which he had so completely recovered that she never got another) fell back to her shoulder.  “Mother, I never knew you had arms like that!” She had never before seen them except when they were covered by an ill-fitting sleeve or, if they had been bare to the elbow, uninvitingly terminating in a pair of housemaid’s gloves or hands steamy with dishwashing.  “Mother, they’re bonny, bonny!” Mrs. Melville had been greatly pleased, but had made light of it.  “Och, they’re nothing.  We all have them in our family.  Ye have them yourself.  Ye must always remember ye got them from your great-grandmother Jeanie Napier, who was so much admired by Sir Walter Scott at her first ball.  And talking of dancing ....” and she had lifted