'Oh no, no, Tom. It only proves the pleasure they do give her. You know, better than I do, that there must be ups and downs, failures of spirits from fatigue when the will is peaceful and resigned.'

'I know it. I know it with my understanding, Ethel, but as to reasoning about her as if she was anybody else, the thing is mere mockery. What can my father be about?' he added, for the twentieth time. 'Talking to her in the morning always knocks her up. If he had only let me warn him; but he hurried me off in his inconsiderate way.'

At last, however, the head disappeared, and Tom rushed indoors.

'So, Tom, you have made shorter work of twenty-five patients than I of one.'

'I'll go again,' said poor Tom, in the desperation of resolute meekness, 'only let me see how she is.'

'Let Ethel go up now. She is very cheery except for a little headache.'

While Ethel obeyed, Dr. May began a minute interrogation of his son, so lengthened that Tom could hardly restrain sharp impatient replies to such apparent trifling with his agony to learn how long his father thought he could keep his treasure, and how much suffering might be spared to her.

At last Dr. May said, 'I may be wrong. Your science is fresher than mine; but to me there seem indications that the organic disease is in the way of being arrested. Good health of course she cannot have; but if she weathers another winter, I think you may look for as many years of happiness with her as in an ordinary case.'

It was the first accent of hope since the hysteric scream that had been his greeting, and all his reserve and dread of emotion: could not prevent his covering his face with his hands, and sobbing aloud. 'Father, father,' he said, 'you cannot tell what this is to me!'

'I can in part, my boy,' said the Doctor, sadly.

'And,' he started up and walked about the room, 'you shall have the whole treatment. I will only follow your measures. No one at New York saw the slightest hope of checking it.'

'They had your account, and you hardly allowed enough for the hysterical affection. I do not say it is certainty—far less, health.'

'Any way, any way, if I may only have her to lie and look at me, it is happiness unlooked for! You don't think I could have treated her otherwise?'

'No. Under His blessing you saved her yourself. You would have perceived the change if she had been an indifferent person.'

Tom made another turn to the door, and came back still half wild, and laid his face on his arms upon the table. 'You tell her,' he said, 'I shall never be able—'

Knocking at Averil's door, Dr. May was answered by a call of 'Tom.'

'Not this time, my dear. He is coming, but we have been talking you over. Ave, you have a very young doctor, and rather too much interested.'

'Indeed!' she said, indignantly; 'he has made me much better.'

'Exactly so, my dear; so much better that he agrees with me that he expressed a strong opinion prematurely.'

'They thought the same at New York,' she said, still resolved on his defence.

'My dear, unless you are bent on growing worse in order to justify his first opinion, I think you will prove that which he now holds. And, Ave, it was, under Providence, skill that we may be proud of by which he has subdued the really fatal disorder. You may have much to undergo, and must submit to a sofa life and much nursing, but I think you will not leave him so soon.'

There was a long pause; at last she said, 'O, Dr. May, I beg your pardon. If I had known, I would never—'

'Never what, my dear?'

'Never have consented! It is such a grievous thing for a professional man to have a sick wife.'

'It is exactly what he wanted, my dear, if you will not fly at me for saying so. Nothing else could teach him that patients are not cases but persons; and here he comes to tell you what he thinks of the trouble of a sick wife.'

'Well,' said Dr. May, as he and Ethel walked away together, 'poor young things, they have a chequered time before them. Pretty well for the doctor who hated sick people, Wards, and Stoneborough; but, after all, I have liked none of our weddings better. I like people to rub one another brighter.'

'And I am proud when the least unselfish nature has from first to last done the most unselfish things. No one of us has ever given up so much as Tom, and I am sure he will be happy in it.'

More can hardly be said without straying into the realms of prediction; yet such of our readers as are bent on carrying on their knowledge of the Daisies beyond the last sentence, may be told that, to the best of our belief, Leonard's shoemaking is not his foremost office in the mission, where he finds that fulness of hopeful gladness which experience shows is literally often vouchsafed to those who have given up home, land, and friends, for the Gospel's sake. His letters are the delight of more than one at Stoneborough; and his sister, upon her sofa, is that home member of a mission without whom nothing can be done—the copier of letters, the depot of gifts, the purveyor of commissions, the maker of clothes, the collector of books, the keeper of accounts—so that the house still merits the name of the S. P. G. office, as it used to be called in the Spenserian era. But Mrs. Thomas May is a good deal more than this. Her sofa is almost a renewal of the family centre that once Margaret's was; the region where all tidings are brought fresh for discussion, all joys and sorrows poured out, the external influence that above all has tended to soften Gertrude into the bright grace of womanhood. Mary Cheviot and Blanche Ernescliffe cannot be cured of a pitying 'poor Tom'—as they speak of 'the Professor'—in which title the awkward sound of Dr. Tom has been merged since an appointment subsequent to the appearance of the "Diseases of Climate". But every one else holds that not his honours as a scientific physician, his discoveries, and ably-written papers—not even his father's full and loving confidence and gratitude, give Professor May as much happiness as that bright-eyed delicate wife, with whom all his thoughts seem to begin and end.

THE END