"Who?" repeated Susan. "Something is wrong. Who?"

"Oh, dear!" said the woman. "There's nothing wrong. Willie has
taken the turn, and is doing nicely."

"Father?"

"Well! he's all right now," she answered, looking another way, as if
seeking for something.

"Then it's Michael! Oh, me! oh, me!" She set up a succession of
weak, plaintive, hysterical cries before the nurse could pacify her,
by declaring that Michael had been at the house not three hours
before to ask after her, and looked as well and as hearty as ever man
did.

"And you heard of no harm to him since?" inquired Susan.

"Bless the lass, no, for sure! I've ne'er heard his name named since
I saw him go out of the yard as stout a man as ever trod shoe-
leather."

It was well, as the nurse said afterwards to Peggy, that Susan had
been so easily pacified by the equivocating answer in respect to her
father. If she had pressed the questions home in his case as she did
in Michael's, she would have learnt that he was dead and buried more
than a month before. It was well, too, that in her weak state of
convalescence (which lasted long after this first day of
consciousness) her perceptions were not sharp enough to observe the