“Yes; that’s his Aunt Hanner, the one I told you was so tight.  She is an old maid, and queer, too; lives all alone, and saves and lays up every cent.  I believe she wears the same black gown now for best which she wore thirteen years ago to her father’s funeral.  He was a queer one too; crazy, some said, and I guess ’twas true.  He took a fancy to stay in one room all the time and would not let anybody in but Hanner, and now he is dead she keeps that room shet up and locked, some say.  I was at the funeral, and Grey, who was a boy, took on awful, and hung over the coffin ever so long.  He was sick with fever after it, and everybody thought he’d die.  He was crazy as a loon.  I watched with him one night and he talked every thing you could think of, about a grave hid away somewhere—­under his bed, he seemed to think—­and made me go down on all fours to look for it.  I suppose he was thinking of his grandfather so lately buried.  And then, he kept talking about Bessie and asking why she did not come.”

“Bessie!  Me!” the young girl exclaimed, with crimson cheeks, and Mrs. Browne replied: 

“No; ’taint likely it was you; and yet, let me see!  Yes, well, I declare; I remember now that his Aunt Lucy, who sat up with me, told me it was a little girl they had talked about before him, a grandniece of Miss Betsey McPherson.  Yes, that was you, sure!  Isn’t it droll, though?”

Bessie did not reply, but in her heart there was a strange feeling as she thought that before she had ever heard of Grey Jerrold, he had been interested in and talked of her in his delirium and in his fevered dreams.

Soon after this, Mrs. Browne arose to go, and said good-by to Bessie, whom she did not expect to see again, as they were to leave on the morrow for Chester, where her husband and son were to meet them.  It was Daisy’s last day at home, and though she had been away many times for a longer period than it was now her intention to stay, this going was different, for the broad sea she was to cross would put an immense distance between her and her husband and child, and she was unusually quiet and gentle and affectionate, telling Bessie, who seemed greatly depressed, that the summer would pass quickly and she should be back to stay for good until the invalid was better or worse.

The next morning when she went to say good-by to her husband he welcomed her with a smile, and with something of his old, courteous manner put out his hand to greet her.  She took it between her own, and raising it to her lips, knelt beside him, and laying her head against his arm, said to him, softly: 

“Archie, I have come to say good-by, but only a little while.  I shall soon be back to stay with you always, or until you are better.”

“I shall never be any better,” he replied, never suspecting how far she was going from him, “but go, if you like,” he continued, “and be happy.  I do not mind it as I used to, for I have Bessie and the birds, who sing to me now all the time.  Can’t you hear them?  They are saying ’Archie, Archie, come,’ as if it were my mother calling to me.”