from the g ate from which all glow had long since faded after a time � for we cannot weep forever � the lo the price of a wife gasping grew more controlled and the pitiful sobs ceased and then nurse lay quietly in the darkness thinking deeply she had made a mistake in coming into this house she had cast the happiness of her life upon one die and it had turned up � blank well it was hard hard yes and something more than hard but she had done it all for the best and she must abide by the consequences of her own act and deed be they what they might but it was hard � very hard as she lay there her mind went back over the past ten years as somehow the human mind is apt to do in times of great and dire trouble how well she remembered her last summer at home the dear old home far away in the heart of the blessed country which she had since heard sneered at as provincial by those who knew not its joys and delights she was barely seventeen then fresh from her simple german school where the wildest excitement that ever came in the way of the pupils was some little mark of favor from the just then most sub to that particular form of homage which the call what innocent fun that night of grief ii had been hers during that long lovely summer when as the daughter of the principal doctor in the neighborhood she had joined in all the pleasures that such a life affords parties musical evenings up the river sewing meetings at the all had been and pleasure to her who always took more than half her pleasure with her so for more than three years longer then death had stepped in and all was changed she recalled it so well � more vividly during that night of grief than during all the years that had come between yes death had stepped in and after an illness so short that they had scarcely realized the presence of danger the handsome kindly genial old doctor who was called old not by reason of his years but because everybody loved him was taken away and his place knew him no more it is one of the most common of english life that those occupying positions of honor and of distinction do not like their neighbors across the channel trouble themselves as to provision for the morrow i have always thought that there is too much trust in the price of a wife about the english character too much of the lilies of the field not in that we neither toil nor spin but in that we take no thought for the morrow that will come for some of us if not for all in this dr had been no exception to the rule he had made a large income and he had spent it � had in fact let it slip away with the good natured ease of a man who finds it hard to say no and when all was over and widow and children had to look hard facts fair and square in the face they realized that the old pleasant days were gone by forever that in the future things would be very different with them and that there was no longer the good genial hard working doctor to stand between them and starvation starvation did i say oh well we do not actually starve we english people who live on our and take no thought for the morrow we do not even go to the at least not very many of us yet if only a few of us drift thus far there are hundreds nay i should rather say thousands and thousands of delicately proud women who have that night of grief to do as best as they can when they suddenly find themselves thrown upon the world having nothing upon which they can depend beyond their own poor exertions so it was with the family nurse recalled it all as she lay there thinking in the darkness � how her mother had looked helplessly from the face of one daughter to the other and what a pitiful cry had risen to her lips � what are we to do how shall we live what will become of us well it was no uncommon story the widow suddenly cast from a home of plenty even of luxury to existence on a of some sixty pounds a year soon sank under the burden of poverty and followed the husband whom she had lost of the five girls of whom was the third all went different ways in life the eldest of them entered herself at a london hospital immediately after her father s death and when her term of training was over went off to where she felt convinced she might best turn her experience to account the second girl went abroad as the price of a wife to a russian family of distinction i have said that was the third of the five daughters of the two who were her went in for music and did fairly well as a singer and the youngest of all who had remained with her mother to the end married very young and so has no more to do with this story i have spoken of as she was called in the world but at home she had always been called felicity she had been named felicity after a who might reasonably have been expected to do great things for her and somehow the quaint name had always stuck to her in preference to the more sober one of i cannot see said mrs when the girl first set out from home to begin her training as a nurse i cannot see why because you are going to earn your 