rossed the room to a small table that served as a
combination dresser and writing desk. Brushing aside her modest toilet
articles, she reached for a pad of paper and a small business-like
fountain pen. Her aunts--she wanted them, all at once, and badly. She
wished that she might talk with them--writing seemed so inadequate.

"My dears," she began, "I miss you very much. Often I'm lonely enough to
cry. Of course," she added hastily (for they must not worry), "of course,
every one is nice to me. I like every one, too. That is, except Dr.
Blanchard. I guess I told you about him; he's the resident physician.
He's awfully good looking but he's not very pleasant. I never hated any
one so--" she paused, for a moment, as a round tear splashed
devastatingly down upon the paper.

X

MRS. VOLSKY PROMISES TO TRY

As Lily pattered across the room, on her soft, almost noiseless little
feet, Rose-Marie stopped talking. She had been having one of her rare
conversations alone with Mrs. Volsky--a conversation that she had almost
schemed for--and yet she stopped. It struck her suddenly as strange that
Lily's presence in any place should make such a vast difference--that the
child should bring with her a healing silence and a curious tenderness.
She had felt, many times before, a slowing up in conversations--she had
seen the bitterness drain from Ella's face, the stolidness from Bennie's.
She had even seen Pa, half intoxicated, turn and go quietly from a room
that Lily was entering. And now, as she watched, she saw a spark leap
into the dullness of Mrs. Volsky's eyes.

With a gentle hand she reached out to the child, drew her close. Lily
nestled against her side with a slight smile upon her faintly coral lips,
with her blue, vacant gaze fixed upon space--or upon something that they
could not see! Rose-Marie had often felt that Lily was watching beautiful
vistas with those sightless eyes of hers; that she was hearing wonderful
sounds, with her useless little ears--sounds that normal people could not
hear. But she did not say anything of the sort to Mrs. Volsky--Mrs.
Volsky would not have been able to understand. Instead she spoke of
something else that had lain, for a long time, upon her mind.

"Has Lily ever received any medical attention?" she asked abruptly.

Mrs. Volsky's face took on lines of blankness. "What say?" she mouthed
thickly. "I don' understan'?"

Rose-Marie reconstructed her question.

"Has Lily ever been t