glass of new milk, warm from the cow. The little earl looked at it with
eager eyes.

"Will I bring you one too?" said Helen.

"Oh--thank you; I am so thirsty. And, please, would you move me a
little--just a very little; I don't often sit so long in one
position. It won't trouble you very much, will it?"

"Not at all, if you will only show me how," stammered Helen, turning hot
and red. But, shaking off her hesitation, she lifted up the poor child
tenderly and carefully, shook his pillows and "sorted" him according to
her own untranslatable Scotch word, then went quickly out of the room to
compose herself, for she had done it all, trembling exceedingly the
while. And yet, somehow, a feeling of great tenderness--tenderer
than even she had felt successively toward her own baby brothers, had
grown up in her heart toward him, taking away every possible feeling of
repulsion on account of his deformity.

She brought back the glass of creamy milk and a bit of oatcake, and laid
them beside the earl. He regarded them wistfully.

"How nice the milk looks! I am so tired--and so thirsty. Please--
would you give me some? Just hold the glass, that's all, and I can
manage."

Helen held it to his lips--the first time she ever did so, but not
the last by many. Years and years from then, when she herself was quite
an old woman, she remembered, giving him that drink of milk, and how,
afterward, two large soft eyes were turned upon hers so lovingly, so