HIS INFANT DAUGHTER 119 



colour. She is still in doubt, however, whether the 

 flame of the candle may not taste as well as it looks/ 

 ' She was/ says Mrs Miller, ' a delight and wonder to 

 Hugh above all wonders. Her little smiles and caresses 

 sent him always away to his daily toil with a lighter 

 heart. When he took small-pox, I, of course, slept on 

 a couch in his room, and was with him night and day. 

 But the great privation was, that he could not see her. 

 We ventured, when he was mending, to open the room 

 door, and let him look at her across the entrance lobby, 

 and allow her to stretch out her little arms to him. Her 

 own illness began soon after. It was a very tedious one, 

 connected with teething, and lasting nine or ten months. 

 All our mutual recreations, and many of my employ- 

 ments, including a school for fisher-lads, which I had 

 taught for some years, at eight every evening, had to be 

 given up. In the spring of '39 I had a close nursing 

 of several weeks. Then there was a marked amendment. 

 One lovely evening in April I went out, for the first time 

 that spring, to breathe the air of the hill. When I re- 

 turned, I found the child in her nurse's arms, at the 

 attic window, from which she used to greet her papa 

 when he came up street. She had been planting a little 

 garden in the window sill of polyanthus, primrose, and 

 other spring flowers. When she saw me, she pushed 

 them away, with the plaintive " awa, awa " she used to 

 utter, and laid her head on my breast. An internal fit 

 came on. The next time she looked up it was to push 

 my head backwards with her little hand, while a startled, 

 inquiring, almost terrible look, came into her lovely eyes. 

 All the time she lay dying, which was three days and 

 three nights, her father was prostrate in the dust before 

 God in an agony of tears. Whether he performed his 

 daily bank duties, or any part of them, I do not remem- 



