'You are better, now, my sister. A few days of quiet rest will make you well,' said the young lady.
The kind, loving words, almost the first she had ever heard from woman, went to her heart, and she wept bitterly as she replied:
'Oh! no, there is no rest, no more rest for me!'
'Why so? What is it that grieves you? Tell me; it will ease your pain to let me share it with you.'
She told her, but she withheld his name. Once it rose to her lips, but she thought how those good people would despise him, how Mr. Russell would cast him off, how his prospects would be blasted, and she kept it back.
'And that is the reason you went to John? You knew what a good, Christian young man he is, and you thought he would aid you?'
'Yes!' said the sick girl.
Thus she punished him for the great wrong he had done her; thus she recompensed him for robbing her of home, of honor, and of peace!
Kate told her father the story, and the good old man gave her a room in one of his tenement houses, and there, a few months later, she gave birth to a little boy and girl. She was very sick, but Kate attended to her wants, procured her a nurse, and a physician, and gave her what she needed more than all else—kindness and sympathy.
Previous to her sickness she had earned a support by her needle, and when she was sufficiently recovered, again had recourse to it. Her earnings were scanty, for she was not yet strong, but they were eked out by an occasional remittance from her aunt, which good lady still adhered to her sock-knitting, straw-braiding habits, but had turned her back resolutely on her benighted brethren and sisters of the Feejee Islands.