“You are very tired from the voyage and the journey here, it is so hot and dusty; but you will rest now, our house is so cool and the air here so pure.  There, let me help you, too.”

And in her eagerness, Bessie passed her arm through Neil’s, or rather put it around him, and thus supported, the sick man went slowly to the open carriage, where Jennie had the children with the exception of little Neil, who, finding himself overlooked, was cultivating the station master and telling him that the dark-looking man was his Uncle Neil from India, and that they were to have ice cream for dinner in honor of his arrival, and he was to go to the table and have two saucers full.

In her anxiety for her cousin, Bessie had forgotten her children, but at the sight of them she exclaimed: 

“Oh, Neil, look!  Here are two of my babies, Robin and Bessie, and the boy over there throwing stones, is your namesake.  I hope they will not trouble you—­Robin and Bessie, I mean—­for you and I are to go in the carriage with them, and Grey will take little Neil in the phaeton.”

“Yes, thank you,” Neil replied, too sick and tired to care for anything just then; and leaning back in the carriage, he closed his eyes wearily, and did not open them again until they were more than half way to Stoneleigh Cottage.

Then Robin, who had been regarding the stranger curiously, laid his little dimpled hand on the thin, wasted one, and said: 

“Is you s’eep?”

With a start Neil’s eyes unclosed, and he looked for the first time on Bessie’s children, with such a pain in his heart as he had hoped he might never feel again.  Over and over he had said to himself that she should never know how the very thought of them hurt and almost maddened him, and how, in his foolish anger, he had burned the lock of hair which she had sent to him from the head of her first-born.  And he said it to himself again, now that he was face to face with the little ones, and though every nerve in his body thrilled at the touch of the soft hand on his, he tried to smile, and said: 

“No, I am not asleep; I am only tired.  What is your name, my little man?”

“Wobin; tree years old.  And this is Baby Bessie, and this is Bessie mamma,” was the prompt reply; and Neil rejoined: 

“Yes, I knew your mamma when she was a little girl no bigger than you, and her hands felt just as yours feel.”

“I p’ays for you every night when mamma puts me to bed.  I say, ’God bless Uncle Neil,’” the child continued.

Then two great tears gathered in the sick man’s eyes, but he brushed them away quickly, while Bessie took the boy in her lap and kept him from talking any more.

By this time they were in the road which led from the highway to the house.  This had formerly been little more than a lane, but under Bessie’s supervision it had been transformed into a broad avenue, bordered with trees and footpaths on either side, and seats beneath the trees, which, though young, had grown rapidly, and already cast cool shadows upon the grass.