"I replied, 'I cannot leave Nat, Mr. Maynard. I thank you very much; you are very good; but it would break my heart to leave him, and I am sure papa would never forgive me if I should do it.'
"He made a gesture of impatience. He had foreseen this, and come prepared for it; but he saw that I promised to prove even more impracticable than he had feared.
"'You have sacrificed your whole life already to that miserable unfortunate boy,' he said, 'and I always told your father he ought not to permit it.'
"At this I grew angry, and I replied:--
"'Mr. Maynard, Nat does more for us all, every hour of his life, than we ever could do for him: dear papa used to say so too.'
"No doubt papa had said this very thing to Mr. Maynard often, for tears came into his eyes and he went on:--
"'I know, I know--he is a wonderful boy, and we might all learn a lesson of patience from him; but I can't have the whole of your life sacrificed to him. I will provide for him amply; he shall have every comfort which money can command.'
"'But where?' said I.
"'In an institution I know of, under the charge of a friend of mine.'
"'A hospital!' exclaimed I; and the very thought of my poor Nat, who had been the centre of a loving home-circle, of a merry school playground, ever since he could remember--the very thought of his finding himself alone among diseased people, and tended by hired attendants, so overcame me that I burst into floods of tears.