“Gradually, as the spring and summer went on, he added little comforts to her store as his wages enabled him to do so.
“He went to work every morning, and returned every evening. He and his sister lived a most secluded life. They joined the Episcopal church at Seawood by letters from the rector of the parish church at Stockton, and as they were described as Joseph Wyvil, of Stockton, and Elizabeth, wife of Joseph Wyvil, a very natural mistake was made in their case—a mistake that they never thought of, and that no one else was aware of.
“They were taken for husband and wife instead of brother and sister; and as they went nowhere but to church, and received no visitors, this natural mistake was not corrected.
“They lived contentedly enough together, writing by every Australian mail to Joe, and looking forward to the time when they should have money enough to go out to him.
“They had not had a line from poor little Joe since he sailed in the transport ship, on the fifteenth of the last December, nor had they expected to get one. They knew that months must elapse before the end of his voyage, and more months before a return letter could come to them. They even remembered how many months must pass before their first letter could reach him, though after the first long gap of silence the letters would come and go more frequently.
“To complicate matters more—to fill the situation with more of grief and more of joy—it was certain that little Lil was destined to become a mother. This fact was not written to Joe, for, said Lil:
“‘If I tell him it will only add to his anxiety and impatience to see us. If my child should live, it will only be the greater surprise and delight to him when he hears of it or sees it.’
“It was about the middle of August, ten months after Lil’s marriage, and seven months after the heart-breaking separation from her husband, that the second catastrophe of her life came.
“You already know all about it—how, while Joseph Wyvil was at work on the shore, in the heat of an August afternoon, the little son of Major Hereward, while bathing, got out of his depth, and being unable to swim, was drowning and cried out for help.
“And Joseph Wyvil forgot all prudence in his manly impulse to rescue the perishing boy, and all overheated as he was, plunged into the water, swam to him and seized him; how he had just time to tow him in and fling him into the outstretched arms of a fisherman, when he was seized with cramp, sank and was swirled away by the under-current.