were flat on her back, her spirit and her vitality remained contagious.
Thomas, whose state of mind was by this time quite apparent to the
family, though he imagined it to be a well-concealed secret, hung about
outside her door, positive that she was going to die, and brought
offerings in the shape of flowers, early apples, and pet animals which he
thought might distract her. Austin, who shared his room, insisted that he
could not sleep because Thomas groaned and sighed so all night; Molly
pertly asked him why he did not try rabbits, as kittens did not seem to
appeal to Sylvia, and his mother bantered him half-seriously for thinking
of "any one so far above him" whose heart, moreover, was buried "in the
grave." Austin's somewhat expurgated version of Sylvia's story put an end
to the latter part of the protest, but sent his hearers into a new
ferment of excitement and sympathy. Sally, who was all ready to start
for a "ball" in Wallacetown with Fred when she heard it, declared she
couldn't go one step, it made her feel "that low in her spirits," and
Fred replied, by gosh, he didn't blame her one mite; whereat they
wandered off and spent the evening at a very comfortable distance from
the house, but fairly close together, revelling in a wealth of gruesome
facts and suppositions. Katherine said she certainly never would marry at
all, men were such dreadful creatures, and Molly said, yes, indeed, but
what else _could_ a girl marry?--while Edith determined to devote the
rest of _her_ life to attending and adoring the lovely, sad, drooping
widow, whose existence was to be one long poem of beautiful seclusion;
and she was so pleased with her own ideas, and her manner of expressing
them, that she wept scalding tears into the broth she was making for
Sylvia as she stirred it over the stove.

The presence of "Uncle Mat," greatly dreaded beforehand, proved an
unexpected source of solace and delight. He was a quiet, shrewd little
man, not unlike Sylvia in many ways, but with a merry twinkle in his eye,