der and Sarah and Shirley pressing close to her side.

"I don't see how anyone can tell a thing from that," Rosemary
complained. "There's nothing but white lines."

The doctor smiled, but his glance was on the frail, almost transparent
hands which held the roll of paper flat on the desk.

"I suppose you thought that carpenters worked from photographs of
completed interiors, or illustrations in interior-decoration
catalogues," he suggested good-naturedly. "You see before you,
Rosemary, a most practical conception of two offices and a reception
room. Mr. Greggs will rip out one side of the house and add them on as
a wing and when the joining is painted over you'll think those rooms
were built when the original house was."

"Well--all right," conceded Rosemary, "I suppose Mr. Greggs knows.
Anyway, it will be fun to have something going on. Vacation certainly
isn't very exciting."

"I want to see them rip the house," announced Sarah with intense
satisfaction.

"I think I owe it to Mr. Greggs almost as much as to Mother, to have
you at a safe distance before the ripping begins," said Doctor Hugh a
little grimly. "Somehow I have the feeling, Sarah, that the best-laid
plans of architects may go awry when you're about."

"Huh!" retorted Sarah, abandoning blue prints for her favorite goatskin
rug on which she flopped in an attitude more comfortable than graceful.

Shirley, too, wearying of the unfamiliar, turned to the delights of the
iron wastebasket into which she tried to wedge her plump self with
indifferent success and a great crackling of paper.

Doctor Hugh began to sharpen a pencil with meticulous care, his dark
eyes behind their glasses apparently intent on the task in hand. But
the more discerning of his patients, and every nurse who had served on
his cases, could have told you that Doctor Willis always saw most when
he appeared to be quite absorbed.

Even an outsider would have been interested in the group gathered in
the young doctor's office that summer afternoon. The little mother
(she was no taller than her oldest daughter and came only to her tall
son's shoulder) sat at one side of the flat-topped desk, leaning her
head on one hand as she studied the plans for the addition to the
house. She was very lovely and very appealing, from her wavy dark hair
faintly streaked with gray to her little buckled slippers, and there
was nothing of the invalid about her. It would have been difficult to
say, o