But there were lots of things you could have done at
home: dollar a year men and all that. However, we must take it as we
find it. You've got _cafard_, and we must make sure you have the best
thing done for you. Do you see?"

"And what," inquired Raven, curiously, "is the best thing?"

"My idea," she said, pelting on in her habitual manner of manipulation
without much regard to the material she was working on, "would be for
you to see an alienist."

"I thought," he was beginning mildly, and paused, with a sense of
danger. He must, he saw, forego the fun of chaffing her from his
awareness that the professional gentleman was to have been sprung on him
to-day, and that he knew equally the infliction could only be deferred.
But how, she would have questioned, did he get his news? Not, he would
have to convince her, through Nan. He amended his attack. "Why didn't
you scare one up and bring him along?"

She frowned. Amelia was always restive under raillery.

"We needn't," she said, "go into that. I did hope to arrange it, but
Dick upset things frightfully. He has behaved badly, very badly indeed.
I hope now to persuade you to call in Doctor Brooke yourself. I should
suppose he'd recommend your going into a sanitarium. However, we can't
judge till we see what he says. Only, John"--and here she looked at him
with some appearance of anxiety, as not knowing how he would take
it--"you must give yourself into our hands."

"Whose hands?" asked Raven. "Yours? Dick's?"

"Oh, dear, no, not Dick's." Again she mentally champed her bit.
Evidently Dick had exhausted her forbearance on the way up. "He's
behaved like a----" Invention failed her. "I do wish," she ended
plaintively, "the modern young man and woman had a vestige of respect
left--only a vestige--for their elders. They're queerness itself. Now
Nan! there's Nan. What's she posting off up here for and settling
herself in your house"--in the west chamber, Raven's inner mind
ironically supplied--"and acting as if you couldn't pry her out?"

"You can't," said Raven. "Nan's here and I'm going to keep her, all
winter, if she doesn't get bored."

Amelia gave a little staccato shriek.

"All winter? I can't stay here all winter."

"Dear old Milly, no," said Raven, with the utmost gentleness. "I
wouldn't have you for the world. It's Nan that's going to stay."

"Why," said Amelia, "it isn't decent. You're not an old man, John.
Sometimes you don't even look middle-aged."

"Yo