“Poor Arthur,” Nina murmured, and laying her head again on Edith’s bosom, she said, “Every body is sad where I am, but I can’t help it.  Oh, I can’t help it.  Nina’s crazy, Miggie, Nina is.  Poor Nina,” and the voice which uttered these words was so sadly touching that Edith’s tears mingled with those of the young creature she hugged the closer to her, whispering,

“I know it, darling, and I pity you so much.  Maybe you’ll get well, now that you know me.”

“Yea, if you’ll stay here always,” said Nina.  “What made you gone so long?  I wanted you so much when the nights were dark and lonesome, and little bits of faces bent over me like yours used to be, Miggie—­yours in the picture, when you wore the red morocco shoe and I led you on the high verandah.”

“What does she mean?” asked Edith, who had listened to the words as to something not wholly new to her.

“I don’t know,” returned Arthur, “unless she has confounded you with her sister, Marguerite, who died many years ago, I have heard that Nina, failing to speak the real name, always called her Miggie.  Possibly you resemble Miggie’s mother.  I think Aunt Phillis said you did.”

Edith, too, remembered Phillis’ saying that she looked like “Master Bernard’s” wife, and Arthur’s explanations seemed highly probable.

“Dear, darling Nina,” she said, kissing the pure white forehead, “I will be a sister to you.”

“And stay with me?” persisted Nina.  “Sleep with me nights with your arms round my neck, just like yon used to do?  I hate to sleep alone, with Soph coiled up on the floor, she scares me so, and won’t answer when I call her.  Then, when I’m put in the recess, it’s terrible.  Don’t let me go in there again, will you?”

Edith had not like Grace, looked into the large closet adjoining the Den, and she did not know what Nina meant, but at a venture she replied,

“No, darling.  You’ll be so good that they will not wish to put you there.”

“I can’t,” returned Nina, with the manner of one who distrusted herself.  “I try, because it will please Arthur, but I must sing and dance and pull my hair when my head feels so big and heavy, and once, Miggie, when it was big as the house, and I pulled my hair till they shaved it off, I tore my clothes in pieces and threw them into the fire.  Then, when Arthur came—­Dr. Griswold sent for him, you see—­I buried my fingers in his hair, so,” and she was about to clutch her own golden locks when Edith shudderingly caught her hands and held them tightly lest they should harm the tresses she thought so beautiful.

“Arthur cried,” continued Nina—­“cried so hard that my brain grew cool at once.  It’s dreadful to see a man cry, Miggie—­a great, strong man like Arthur.  Poor Arthur, didn’t you cry and call me your lost Nina?”

A suppressed moan was Arthur’s answer, and Nina, when she heard it, slid from Edith’s arms and crossing over to where she sat, climbed into his lap with all the freedom of a little child, and winding her arms about his neck, said to him softly,