Perhaps Pink was ill, Hilda thought, with fresh alarm.

If it should be so, Bubble could not leave her, for Mrs.Chirk was nursing a sick woman two or three miles away, and there were no other neighbors nearer than the farm.

"Oh, my Pink!" cried Hilda; "and I cannot go to you at once, for Nurse Lucy must not be left alone in her trouble.

I must wait, wait patiently till Farmer Hartley comes back." Patiently she tried to wait.

She stole up to her room, and taking up one of her best-beloved books, "The Household of Sir Thomas More," lost herself for a while in the noble sorrows of Margaret Roper.