subsided into their natural and tranquil course. But, as if this young
creature was always to be in some heavy trouble, her ewe-lamb began to be
ailing, pining and sickly. The child's mysterious illness turned out to
be some affection of the spine likely to affect health; but not to
shorten life--at least so the doctors said. But the long dreary
suffering of one whom a mother loves as Alice loved her only child, is
hard to look forward to. Only Norah guessed what Alice suffered; no one
but God knew.

And so it fell out, that when Mrs. Wilson, the elder, came to her one day
in violent distress, occasioned by a very material diminution in the
value the property that her husband had left her,--a diminution which
made her income barely enough to support herself, much less Alice--the
latter could hardly understand how anything which did not touch health or
life could cause such grief; and she received the intelligence with
irritating composure. But when, that afternoon, the little sick child
was brought in, and the grandmother--who after all loved it well--began a
fresh moan over her losses to its unconscious ears--saying how she had
planned to consult this or that doctor, and to give it this or that
comfort or luxury in after yearn but that now all chance of this had
passed away--Alice's heart was touched, and she drew near to Mrs. Wilson
with unwonted caresses, and, in a spirit not unlike to that of, Ruth,
entreated, that come what would, they might remain together. After much
discussion in succeeding days, it was arranged that Mrs. Wilson should
take a house in Manchester, furnishing it partly with what furniture she
had, and providing the rest with Alice's remaining two hundred pounds.
Mrs. Wilson was herself a Manchester woman, and naturally longed to
return to her native town. Some connections of her own at that time
required lodgings, for which they were willing to pay pretty handsomely.
Alice undertook the active superintendence and superior work of the