heard now and then, in her walks from home, or when some
of "the girls" came in and called her down into the parlor--about pretty
looks, and becoming dresses, and who danced with who at the "German"
last night, and what a scrape Loolie Lloyd had got into with mixing up
and misdating her engagements at the class, and the last new roll for
the hair--used to seem rather trivial to her in these days!

Occasionally, when Mr. Gartney had what nurse called a "good" day, he
would begin to ask for some of his books and papers, with a thought
toward business; and then Miss Sampson would display her carpetbag, and
make a show of picking up things to put in it. "For," said she, "when
you get at your business, it'll be high time for me to go about mine."

"But only for half an hour, nurse! I'll give you that much leave of
absence, and then we'll have things back again as they were before."

"I guess you will! And _further_ than they were before. No, Mr. Gartney,
you've got to behave. I _won't_ have them vicious-looking accounts
about, and it don't signify."

"If it don't, why not?" But it ended in the accounts and the carpetbag
disappearing together.

Until one morning, some three weeks from the beginning of Mr. Gartney's
illness, when, after a few days' letting alone the whole subject, he
suddenly appealed to the doctor.

"Doctor," said he, as that gentleman entered, "I must have Braybrook up
here this afternoon. I dropped things just where I stood, you know. It's
time to take an observation."

The doctor looked at his patient gravely.

"Can't you be content with simply picking up things, and putting them
by, for this year? What I ought to tell you to do would be to send
business to the right about, and go off for an entire rest and change,
for three months, at least."

"You don't know what you're talking about, doctor!"

"Perhaps not, on one side of the subject. I feel pretty certain on the
other, however."

Mr. Gartney did not send for Braybrook that afternoon. The next morning,
however, he came, and the tabooed books and papers were got out.

In another day or two, Miss Sampson _did_ pack her carpetbag, and go
back to her air-tight stove and solitary cups of tea. Her occupation in
Hickory Street was gone.

CHAPTER XI.

CROSS CORNERS.

"O thou that pinest in the imprisonment of the Actual, and criest
bitterly to the Gods for a kingdom, wherein to rule and create,
know this of a truth, the thing thou seeke