wo and rushed away. How could she add sentences to
this hollow phrase, the mere employment of which seemed a sacrilege.
Dear Miss Challoner. Oh, she was dear, but--

Unconsciously the young head drooped, and the pen slid from her hand.

"I cannot," she murmured, "I cannot think what to say."

"Shall I help you?" came softly from the bed. "I'll try and not forget
that it is Doris writing."

"If you will be so good," she answered, with renewed courage. "I can put
the words down if you will only find them for me."

"Write then. 'Dear Miss Challoner!"

"I have already written that."

"Why do you shudder?"

"I'm cold. I've been cold all day. But never mind that, Mr. Brotherson.
Tell me how to begin my letter."

"This way. 'I've not been able to answer your kind letter, because I
have had to play nurse for some three or four weeks to a very fretful
and exacting patient.' Have you written that?"

"No," said Doris, bending over her desk till her curls fell in a tangle
over her white cheeks. "I do not like to," she protested at last, with
an attempt at naivete which seemed real enough to him.

"Well, leave out the fretful if you must, but keep in the exacting. I
have been exacting, you know."

Silence, broken only by the scratching of the stubborn, illy-directed
pen.

"It's down," she whispered. She said, afterward, that it was like
writing with a ghost looking over one's shoulder.

"Then add, 'Mr. Brotherson has had a slight attack of fever, but he is
getting well fast, and will soon--, Do I run on too quickly?"

"No, no, I can follow."

"But not without losing breath; eh, Doris?"

As he laughed, she smiled. There was a heroism in that smile, Oswald
Brotherson, of which you knew nothing.

"You might speak a little more slowly," she admitted.

Quietly he repeated the last phrase. "'But he is getting well fast and
will soon be ready to take up the management of the Works which was
given him just before he was taken ill.' That will show her that I am
working up," he brightly remarked as Doris carefully penned the last
word. "Of myself you need say nothing more, unless--" he paused and his
face took on a wistful look which Doris dared not meet; "unless--but no,
no, she must think it has been only a passing indisposition. If she knew
I had been really ill, she would suffer, and perhaps act imprudently or
suffer and not dare to act at all, which might be sadder for her still.
Leave it where it is and begin abo