without him perfectly well for the next sixty days, and that the
voyage would do him good. Were she to become his wife, it would be
necessary to give up the Settlement work in which she had become
deeply interested as the result of her activities as a bachelor-girl.
She must be certain that he was all she believed him to be before she
admitted that she loved him and burned her philanthropical bridges.

Returning to her quarters in the heart of the city, Mary Wellington
became so absorbed in her work of bringing cheer and relief to the
ignorant and needy that she almost forgot George Colfax. Yet once in a
while it would occur to her that it would be very pleasant if he
should drop in for a cup of tea, and she would wonder what he was
doing. Did she, perchance, at the same time exert herself with an
ardor born of an acknowledged inkling that these might be the last
months of her service? However that may have been, she certainly was
very busy, and responded eagerly to every call upon her sympathy.

Among the cases of distress brought to her attention which interested
her most was that of two children whose mother had just died. Their
father was a drinking man--a reeling sot who had neglected his family
for years. His wife, proud in her destitution, had worked her fingers
to the bone to maintain a tenement-roof over the heads of their two
little boys and to send them neat and properly nourished to school.
This labor of love had been too much for her strength, and finally she
had fallen a victim to consumption. This was shortly after her
necessities had become known to the Settlement to which Mary
Wellington belonged. The dying mother besought her visitor to keep
watch over her boys, which Mary promised faithfully to do.

The waifs, Joe and Frank, were two bright-eyed youngsters of eleven