Madge Mullion was very ill, and she seemed to Geoffrey to be going back,
as he sat looking at her a few days after his return from town.
There was something about the poor girl he liked, for she was
simple-hearted and loving to a degree, and he would often sit in the
next room apparently busy writing, but watching her intensity of
affection for her child.
"Come, Madge," he said to her, "why don't you grow strong again, and be
a woman and fight the world?"