She fancies that he has had the measles; but our children have had it too, so there's no fear.

Come up-stairs, Mary Baines." Passing, with a thankful look, the room where her own boys slept, the good mother established this forlorn young mother and her two children in a little closet outside the nursery door; cheered her with comfortable words; helped her ignorance with wise counsels--for Ursula was the general doctress of all the poor folk round.

It was almost midnight before she came down to the parlour where John and I sat, he with little Muriel asleep in his arms.

The child would gladly have slumbered away all night there, with the delicate, pale profile pressed close into his breast.
"Is all right, love?
How tired you must be!" John put his left arm round his wife as she came and knelt by him, in front of the cheerful fire.
"Tired?
Oh, of course; but you can't think how comfortable they are up-stairs.

Only poor Mary Baines does nothing but cry, and keep telling me that nothing ails her lad but hunger.