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Rh and to which we were seldom admitted, and only one at a time. An odd change seemed to come over us all. Nurse Starke was quite kind now, and used to read to her (but now about good children who lived and were very happy), and tell stories, and make beef-tea for her, and turn the cold side of the pillow to her poor little fevered head. And the oddest part of the thing was that Nurse Starke was kind to us too, and used to come of her own accord to tell us how Mim was (she was always a little better), and what messages she had sent to us, and how she seemed to take a new pleasure in the toys she had once discarded. And then she would take us, one at a time, to the sick room, and we were allowed at first to speak to her, but afterwards only to sit on the edge of the bed, (it was such a big bed now!), and hold her little dry hand. Joe Paulby would come back crying (it was a strange thing to see him cry, and it touched me as it touches me now to see a strong man in tears), and he would spend his half-pence—they were rare enough, poor fellow—in picture-books for our poor little dying wife. But a time came when even the picture-books were forbidden, and then the whole house was enjoined to silence, and the grave doctor—graver now than ever—came and went on tip-toe. And if we stole to the little girl's bedroom, as we often did, we were pretty sure to find great hard Nurse Starke in tears, or with traces of tears upon her face; and once when Joe and I crept down to the room, and looked in at the half-opened door, we saw the shadow of Nurse Starke on her knees, thrown by the flickering firelight on the wall. Then we knew that the end was near.

One day Captain Paulby came home earlier than