The days passed on, and every day she grew weaker.  She did not suffer much, but nothing seemed to do her good.  Mrs. Elton was kindness itself.  Harry was in dreadful distress.  He haunted her room, creeping in whenever he had a chance, and sitting in corners out of the way.  Euphra liked to have him near her.  She seldom spoke to him, or to any one but Margaret, for Margaret alone could hear with ease what she said.  But now and then she would motion him to her bedside, and say —­ it was always the same —­

“Harry, dear, be good.”

“I will; indeed I will, dear Euphra,” was still Harry’s reply.

Once, expressing to Margaret her regret that she should be such a trouble to her, she said: 

“You have to do so much for me, that I am ashamed.”

“Do let me wash the feet of one of his disciples;” Margaret replied, gently expostulating; after which, Euphra never grumbled at her own demands upon her.

Again, one day, she said: 

“I am not right at all to-day, Margaret.  God can’t love me, I am so hateful.”

“Don’t measure God’s mind by your own, Euphra.  It would be a poor love that depended not on itself, but on the feelings of the person loved.  A crying baby turns away from its mother’s breast, but she does not put it away till it stops crying.  She holds it closer.  For my part, in the worst mood I am ever in, when I don’t feel I love God at all, I just look up to his love.  I say to him:  ’Look at me.  See what state I am in.  Help me!” Ah! you would wonder how that makes peace.  And the love comes of itself; sometimes so strong, it nearly breaks my heart.”

“But there is a text I don’t like.”

“Take another, then.”

“But it will keep coming.”

“Give it back to God, and never mind it.”

“But would that be right?”

“One day, when I was a little girl, so high, I couldn’t eat my porridge, and sat looking at it.  ‘Eat your porridge,’ said my mother.  ‘I don’t want it,’ I answered.  ’There’s nothing else for you,’ said my mother —­ for she had not learned so much from my father then, as she did before he died.  ‘Hoots!’ said my father —­ I cannot, dear Euphra, make his words into English.”

“No, no, don’t,” said Euphra; “I shall understand them perfectly.”

“‘Hoots!  Janet, my woman!’ said my father.  ‘Gie the bairn a dish o’ tay.  Wadna ye like some tay, Maggy, my doo?’ ‘Ay wad I,’ said I.  ’The parritch is guid eneuch,” said my mother.  ’Nae doot aboot the parritch, woman; it’s the bairn’s stamack, it’s no the parritch.’  My mother said no more, but made me a cup of such nice tea; for whenever she gave in, she gave in quite.  I drank it; and, half from anxiety to please my mother, half from reviving hunger, attacked the porridge next, and ate it up.  ‘Leuk at that!’ said my father.  ‘Janet, my woman, gie a body the guid that they can tak’, an’ they’ll sune tak’ the guid that they canna.  Ye’re better noo, Maggy, my doo?’ I never told him that I had taken the porridge too soon after all, and had to creep into the wood, and be sick.  But it is all the same for the story.”