Page:Saxe Holm's Stories, Series Two.djvu/47

Rh "But why dost thou keep it, my Karl? Ach, it has cost thee dear!"

Karl reached his hand out hastily, as if to rescue the leaf.

"But it have bring me home," he said. "I will keep it so long as I live," and as he laid it back in the pocket-book, he smiled with the smile of one who recalls a bliss known only to himself.

It was indeed the "home which could cure." Karl grew better hour by hour. The wound healed, and, although the physicians said that the lungs must always be weak, Karl was in two months a strong man.

Margaret did not grow wonted to his presence in the family. It disturbed her, she hardly knew how, or why, and she chided herself often for the unreasonable feeling. Since that first morning, when with his blue eyes blazing with admiration, he had compared her cheeks to red lilies, he had never by word or glance betrayed any feeling other than the respectful affection with which his brother and sister treated her. His eyes met hers with the same clear, steady response that Wilhelm's always did, and he listened to her words with a simple reverence like that the children showed her. Often when she was speaking, he sat with his head slightly bowed, his eyes fixed on the ground; and an expression of rapt attention; it was as a man might listen to the words of a priestess. Sometimes when he looked earnestly at her, there was, for a