Passing, with a thankful look, the room where her own boys slept, the good mother established this forlorn young mother and her two children in a little closet outside the nursery door; cheered her with comfortable words; helped her ignorance with wise counsels—for Ursula was the general doctress of all the poor folk round. It was almost midnight before she came down to the parlour where John and I sat, he with little Muriel asleep in his arms. The child would gladly have slumbered away all night there, with the delicate, pale profile pressed close into his breast.
"Is all right, love? How tired you must be!" John put his left arm round his wife as she came and knelt by him, in front of the cheerful fire.
"Tired? Oh, of course; but you can't think how comfortable they are up-stairs. Only poor Mary Baines does nothing but cry, and keep telling me that nothing ails her lad but hunger. Are they so very poor?"
John did not immediately answer; I fancied he looked suddenly uneasy, and imperceptibly pressed his little girl closer to him.
"The lad seems very ill. Much worse than our children were with measles."
"Yet how they suffered, poor pets! especially Walter. It was the thought of them made me pity her so. Surely I have not done wrong?"
"No—love; quite right and kind. Acting so, I think one need not fear. See, mother, how soundly Muriel sleeps. It's almost a pity to waken her—but we must go to bed now."
"Stay one minute," I said. "Tell us, John—I quite forgot to ask till now—what is that 'painful business' you mentioned, which called the sheriff to Lord Luxmore's?"
John glanced at his wife, leaning fondly against him, her face full of sweet peace, then at his little daughter asleep, then round the cheerful fire-lit room, outside which the autumn night-wind went howling furiously.
"Love, we that are so happy, we must not, dare not condemn."