How the mother watched all the next morning, while the unconscious Carey first marvelled at her nervousness and silence, and then grew almost infected by it.  It was very strange, she thought, that Mrs. Brownlow, always so kind, should say nothing but “humph” on being told that Miss Heath’s workmen had finished, and that she must return next Monday morning.  It was the Doctor’s day to be early at the hospital, and he had had a summons to see some one on the way, so that he was gone before breakfast, when Carey’s attempts to discuss her happy day in the country met with such odd, fitful answers; for, in fact, Mrs. Brownlow could not trust herself to talk, and had no sooner done breakfast than she went off to her housekeeping affairs and others, which she managed unusually to prolong.

Carey was trying to draw some flowers in a glass before her-—a little purple, green-winged orchis, a cowslip, and a quivering dark-brown tuft of quaking grass.  He came and stood behind her, saying—-

“You’ve got the character of those.”

“They are very difficult,” sighed Carey; “I never tried flowers before, but I wanted to take them with me.”

“To take them with you?” he repeated, rather dreamily.

“Yes, back to another sort of Heath,” she said, with a little laugh; “don’t you know I go next Monday?”

“If you go, I hope it will only be to come back.”

“Oh! if Mrs. Brownlow is so good as to let me come again in the holidays!” and she was all one flush of joy, looking round, and up in his face, to see whether it could be true.

“Not only for holidays-—for work days,” he said, and his voice shook.

“But Mrs. Brownlow can’t want a companion?”

“But I do.  Caroline, will you come back to us to make home doubly sweet to a busy man, who will do his best to make you happy?”

The little creature looked up in his face bewildered, and then said shyly, the colour surging into her face—-

“Please, what did you say?”

“I asked if you would stay with us, and make this place bright for us, as my wife,” he said, taking both the little brown hands into his own, and looking into the widely-opened wondering eyes; while she answered, “if I may,"-—the very words, almost the very tone, in which she had replied to his invitation to come to recover at his house.

“Ah, my poor child, you have no one’s leave to ask!” he said; “you belong to us, only to us,"—-and he drew her into his arms, and kissed her.

Then he felt and heard a great sob, and there were two tears on her cheek when he could see her face, but she smiled with happy, quivering lip, and said—-

“It was like when papa kissed me before he went away; he would be so glad.”

In the midst of the caress that answered this, a bell sounded, and in the certainty that the announcement of luncheon would instantly follow, they started apart.