"Why do you stay here! I'd pack up everything and be off instanter."
"Necessity knows no law," she said. "Cyril, son, can you go down to the spring and get some fresh water for the sick ones?"
"Yes, ma'am; I'll take the biggest bucket; cause folks always want to drink so much water when the chill's on 'em."
"Cyril knows that by experience," his mother remarked as the boy left the room.
"Why do you speak of staying here as a necessity, Marcia?" asked her cousin. "You had as large a fortune from your mother as I from mine."
"Riches take wings, Horace, and a large family and unfortunate investments supplied them to mine."
She spoke cheerfully, jestingly, as though it were but occasion for mirth, but his tone was full of concern as he answered,
"Indeed I never knew that. It is a thousand pities! I wonder you can be so content and light-hearted as you seem."
"Ah, I have so much left! All my chiefest treasures,—husband, children, many great and precious promises for both this life and the next."