poor girl meant. You will be glad to hear that both Mrs. Medland and Lottie were with Malvina
at the time of her death; Mrs. Medland appears broken-hearted, for Malvina was her favourite child."
The letter dropped from Ann's hand, and she stood gazing with unseeing eyes out of the window. Malvina was dead. The brave, patient life was at an end. Never again, with aching back and weary arms, would she "mind babies" or do plain needlework or crochet; she was beyond all that in the presence of the Great Physician. Ann knew she had no need to be sorry for Malvina now, but the tears welled up in her eyes and ran down her cheeks as she recalled her last interview with the sick girl, and her tender heart was full of sympathy for the mother and sister in their desolation.
"I am glad I made Malvina that promise," she thought, "I believe it made her very happy; but I don't know how I am going to keep it—perhaps God will show me when I get home."
She picked up Dr. Elizabeth's letter and finished reading it. By that time her grandmother had come downstairs and she had to account for her tears; and they talked of Malvina—whom old Mrs. Reed knew well by repute—till they were interrupted by the servant who brought in the lamp and the supper things.
The next morning when Ann, according to the arrangement she had made, joined the three Wyndham girls in a walk through some beautiful woods which adjoined Teymouth, Violet noticed at once that she was unusually subdued in her manner, and asked if anything was amiss. In a voice which faltered, in spite of the effort she made to keep it steady, Ann told her news.
"Malvina dead!" gasped Violet, with a rush of tears to her brown eyes; "oh, Ann! When did you hear that?" She looked, as she felt, much shocked.
"Last night, in a letter from Dr. Elizabeth, which arrived for me while we were on the beach," Ann rejoined; "she did not suffer at the last, so Dr. Elizabeth says, I felt so relieved to hear that. Do you remember, Violet, how she said that day when we went to say good-bye to her at the hospital 'He will be with me all the way?'"
Violet assented with a nod, she could not trust her voice to speak, and Madge asked:—
"What did she mean, Ann?"