"Why, you're the only one that can teach me how to take care of him.

He says you've always taken care of him, and I suppose he's too old now to learn how to look after himself." "You wouldn't mind coming here to live ?" asked Ellen humbly.

She hardly dared speak out thus plainly; but she felt that never again would there be such a good chance of success.
It was full a minute before Madelene could trust her voice to make reply, not because she hesitated to commit herself, but because she was moved to the depths of her tender heart by this her first experience of about the most tragic of the everyday tragedies in human life--a lone old woman pleading with a young one for a little corner to sit in and wait for death.

"I wish it weren't quite such a grand house," she said at last with a look at the old woman--how old she seemed just then!--a look that was like light.

"We're too poor to have the right to make any such start.
But, if you'd let me--if you're sure you wouldn't think me an intruder--I'd be glad to come." "Then that's settled," said Mrs.Ranger, with a deep sigh of relief.
But her head and her hands were still trembling from the nervous shock of the suspense, the danger that she would be left childless and alone.
"We'll get along once you're used to the idea of having me about.