s there should appear
symptoms of temporary paralysis, such as sometimes follow this disease,
or unless other complications should arise. Millard thought it would be
more prudent and, so to speak, realistic, to make Mrs. Hilbrough's
inquiries and his own less frequent after this. He and Robert,
therefore, called on alternate days. On Monday it was Mr. Millard who
called, on Tuesday it was a bunch of flowers and inquiries in Mrs.
Hilbrough's name. But Phillida's progress was so slow that it seemed
doubtful after some days whether she made any advancement at all. The
disease had quite disappeared, but strength did not return. At the end
of a week from Dr. Gunstone's leave-taking, the family were in great
anxiety lest there might be some obscure malady preying on her strength,
and there was talk of taking her to some southern place to meet half-way
the oncoming spring. But this would have drawn heavily on the family
savings, which were likely to dwindle fast enough; the appearance of
diphtheria having vacated all the rooms in the house at a time when
there was small hope of letting them again before the autumn.

Milder measures than a trip were tried first. The arm-chair in which she
sat was removed into the front parlor in hope that a slight change of
scene might be an improvement; the cheerful sight of milk-wagons and
butcher-carts, the melodious cries of old clothes buyers and sellers of
"ba-nan-i-yoes" and the piping treble of girl-peddlers of
horse-red-deesh were somehow to have a tonic effect upon her. But the
spectacle of the rarely swept paving-stones of a side-street in the last
days of March was not inspiriting. Phillida had the additional
discomfort of involuntarily catching glimpses of her own pallid and
despondent face in the pier-glass between the windows.

As for the life of the street, it seemed to her to belong to a world in
which she no longer had any stake. The shock of disillusion regarding
faith-healing had destroyed for the time a good deal besides. If
mistaken in one thing she might be in many. However wholesome and
serviceable a critical skepticism may prove to an enthusiast in the full
tide of health and activity, to Phillida broken in heart and hope it was
but another weight to sink her to the bottom. For now there was no
longer love to look forward to, nor was she even able to interest
herself again in the work that had mainly occupied her life, but which
also she had marred by her errors. Turn