ing on?'

'Getting right again, he says. And they are coming back to England; his
wife's consumptive symptoms have disappeared, of course, and she is
very impatient to leave Madeira. It is to be hoped she will allow poor
Tom time to get his rib set. Probably that consideration doesn't weigh
much with her. He says that he is writing to you by the same mail.'

'Poor old fellow!' said Everard, with feeling. 'Does he complain about
his wife?'

'He never has done till now, but there's a sentence here that reads
doubtfully. "Muriel," he says, "has been terribly upset about my
accident. I can't persuade her that I didn't get thrown on purpose; yet
I assure you I didn't."'

Everard laughed.

'If old Tom becomes ironical, he must be hard driven. I have no great
longing to meet Mrs. Thomas.'

'She's a silly and a vulgar woman. But I told him that in plain terms
before he married. It says much for his good nature that he remains so
friendly with me. Read the letter, Everard.'

He did so.

'H'm--very kind things about me. Good old Tom! Why don't I marry? Well,
now, one would have thought that his own experience--'

Miss Barfoot began to talk about something else. Before very long Rhoda
came back, and in the conversation that followed it was mentioned that
she would leave for her holiday in two days.

'I have been reading about Cheddar,' exclaimed Everard, with animation.
'There's a flower grows among the rocks called the Cheddar pink. Do you
know it?'

'Oh, very well,' Rhoda answered. 'I'll bring you some specimens.'

'Will you? That's very kind.'

'Bring _me_ a genuine pound or two of the cheese, Rhoda,' requested
Miss Barfoot gaily.

'I will. What they sell in the shops there is all sham, Mr.
Barfoot--like so much else in this world.'

'I care nothing about the cheese. That's all very well for a
matter-of-fact person like cousin Mary, but _I_ have a strong vein of
poetry; you must have noticed it?'

When they shook hands,--

'You will really bring me the flowers?' Everard said in a voice
sensibly softened.

'I will make a note of it,' was the reassuring answer.

CHAPTER XI

AT NATURE'S BIDDING

The sick girl whom Miss Barfoot had been to see was Monica Madden.

With strange suddenness, after several weeks of steady application to
her work, in a cheerful spirit which at times rose to gaiety, Monica
became dull, remiss, unhappy; then violent headaches attacked her, and
one morning she declared