e moon"--or
so Marcella thought bitterly. Despair filled her heart as she looked
at Patty's white face and transparent hands and listened to the
doctor's coolly professional advice. Patty's illness had already swept
away the scant savings of three years. Marcella had nothing left with
which to do anything more for her.

She did not make any answer to the doctor--she could not. Besides,
what could she say, with Patty's big blue eyes, bigger and bluer than
ever in her thin face, looking at her so wistfully? She dared not say
it was impossible. But Aunt Emma had no such scruples. With a great
clatter and racket, that lady fell upon the dishes that held Patty's
almost untasted dinner and whisked them away while her tongue kept
time to her jerky movements.

"Goodness me, doctor, do you think you're talking to millionaires?
Where do you suppose the money is to come from to send Patty to the
country? _I_ can't afford it, that is certain. I think I do pretty
well to give Marcella and Patty their board free, and I have to work
my fingers to the bone to do _that_. It's all nonsense about Patty,
anyhow. What she ought to do is to make an effort to get better. She
doesn't--she just mopes and pines. She won't eat a thing I cook for
her. How can anyone expect to get better if she doesn't eat?"

Aunt Emma glared at the doctor as if she were triumphantly sure that
she had propounded an unanswerable question. A dull red flush rose to
Marcella's face.

"Oh, Aunt Emma, I _can't_ eat!" said Patty wearily. "It isn't because
I won't--indeed, I can't."

"Humph! I suppose my cooking isn't fancy enough for you--that's the
trouble. Well, I haven't the time to put any frills on it. I think I
do pretty well to wait on you at all with all that work piling up
before me. But some people imagine that they were born to be waited
on."

Aunt Emma whirled the last dish from the table and left the room,
slamming the door behind her.

The doctor shrugged his shoulders. He had become used to Miss Gibson's
tirades during Patty's illness. But Marcella had never got used to
them--never, in all the three years she had lived with her aunt. They
flicked on the raw as keenly as ever. This morning it seemed
unbearable. It took every atom of Marcella's self-control to keep her
from voicing her resentful thoughts. It was only for Patty's sake that
she was able to restrain herself. It was only for Patty's sake, too,
that she did not, as soon as the doctor had