me, Matilda, that I have not thought of this before, but I think if
you are relieved of part of your labor for a while, your health will
improve."

The poor wife smiled sadly, and pulling down a stalk laden with buds
from an adjacent rose bush that stood waving on a flowery bank beside
them, and pointing to a crimson bud enclosed in its casing of green,
she said, "Charles, is not that a beautiful bud?"

He looked at it and answered in the affirmative.

"Do you think it will ever bloom?"

"I see no reason why it should not, it looks as promising as any one
upon the stem."

"But look a little closer, do you see that little worm gnawing at the
very heart and sapping the secret springs of its life?"

Her husband gazed tearfully upon her, and she felt she was understood;
and then pressed her to his heart in a passionate, fond embrace, and
spoke words of comfort, and of hope and of life.

The wife smiled faintly upon him, and replied:

"Even now there is such a weariness in my limbs that I do not feel as
though I scarcely can reach our little cottage home, where we have
spent so many happy hours together."

They called their little Frank, who bore his grandfather's name, and