Poor Ellen! what would she not have given for power to listen to her mother, and cry at her ease?  But she was forced to hurry, or Betsey would have been half-way up-stairs in another instant.  She was a hopeful girl, however, and after that ‘not to me,’ resolved to believe nothing of the matter.  Mrs. King knelt down by her son, and looked at him tenderly; and then, as his eyes went on begging for an answer, she said, ’Dr. Blunt never told me there was no hope, my dear, and everything lies in God’s power.’

‘But you don’t think I shall get well, Mother?’

‘I don’t feel as if you would, my boy,’ she said, very low, and fondling him all the time.  ’You’ve got to cough like Father and Charlie, and—­though He might raise my boy up—­yet anyhow, Alfy boy, if God sees it good for us, it will be good for us, and we shall be helped through with it.’

‘But I’m not good, Mother!  What will become of me?’

’Perhaps the hearing this is all out of God’s mercy, to give you time to get ready, my dear.  You are no worse now than you were this morning; you are not like to go yet awhile.  No, indeed, my child; so if you don’t put off any longer—­’

‘Mother!’ called up Ellen.  She was in despair.  Betsey was not to be kept by her from satisfying herself upon Alfred’s looks, and Mrs. King was only in time to meet her on the stairs, and tell her that he was so weak and low, that he could not be seen now, she could not tell how it would be when he had had his tea.

Ellen thought she had never had so distressing a tea-drinking in her life, as the being obliged to sit listening civilly to Betsey’s long story about the trouble she had about a stocking of Mrs. Martin’s that was lost in the wash, and that had gone to Miss Rosa Marlowe, because Mrs. Martin had her things marked with a badly-done K. E. M., and all that Mrs. Martin’s Maria and all Miss Marlowe’s Jane had said about it, and all Betsey’s ’Says I to Mother,’—­when she was so longing to be watching poor Alfred, and how her mother could sit so quietly making tea, and answering so civilly, she could not guess; but Mrs. King had that sense of propriety and desire to do as she would be done by, which is the very substance of Christian courtesy, the very want of which made Betsey, with all her wish to be kind, a real oppression and burthen to the whole party.

And where was Harold?  Ellen had not seen him coming out of church, but meal-times were pretty certain to bring him home.

‘Oh,’ said Betsey, ‘I’ll warrant he is off to the merry orchard.’

‘I hope not,’ said Mrs. King gravely.

‘He never would,’ said Ellen, in anger.

’Ah, well, I always said I didn’t see no harm in a lad getting a bit of pleasure.’

‘No, indeed,’ said Mrs. King.  ’Harold knows I would not stint him in the fruit nor in the pleasure, but I should be much vexed if he could go out on a Sunday, buying and selling, among such a lot as meet at that orchard.’