Hugo pawned it? All Mother's things, too?"

"I don't know what he did with it," Fay said, wearily. "He told me it
wasn't safe in Dariawarpur, as there were so many robbers about that hot
weather, and he took all the things in their cases to send to the bank.
And I never saw them again."

Jan said nothing, but she reflected rather ruefully that when Fay
married she had let her have nearly all their mother's ornaments, partly
because Fay loved jewels as jewels, and Jan cared little for them
except as associations. "If I'd kept more," Jan thought, "they'd have
come in for little Fay. Now there's nothing except what Daddie gave me."

"Are you sorry, Jan?" Fay asked, presently. "I suppose there again you
think I ought to have stood out, to have made inquiries and insisted on
getting a receipt from the bank. But I knew very well they were not
going to the bank. I don't think they fetched much, but Hugo looked a
little less harassed after he'd got them. I've nothing left now but my
wedding ring and the little enamel chain like yours, that Daddie gave us
the year he had that portrait of Meg in the Salon and took us over to
see it. Where is Meg? Has she come back yet?"

"Meg is still in Bremen with an odious German family, but she leaves at
the end of the Christmas holidays, as the girl is going to school, and
Meg will be utilised to bring her over. Then she's to have a rest for a
month or two, and I daresay she'd come to Wren's End and help us with
the babies when we get back."

Fay leant forward and said eagerly, "Try to get her, Jan. I'd love to
think she was there to help you."

"To help us," Jan repeated firmly.

Fay sighed. "I can never think of myself as of much use any more;
besides ... Oh, Jan, won't you face it? You who are so brave about
facing things ... I don't believe I shall come through--this time."

Jan got up and walked restlessly about the verandah. She tried to make
herself say, heard her own voice saying without any conviction, that it
was nonsense; that Fay was run down and depressed and no wonder; and
that she would feel quite different in a month or two. And all the time,
though her voice said these preposterously banal things, her brain
repeated the doctor's words after his last visit: "I wish there was a
little more stamina, Miss Ross. I don't like this complete inertia. It's
not natural. Can't you rouse her at all?"

"My sister has had a very trying time, you know. She seems thoroughly
worn o