"

"I wish John were here."

"I don't think we have anything to fear in his absence from men whose
only wish is to get away from us. If it is a question of propriety,
my dear Kate, surely there is the presence of mother to prevent any
scandal--although really her own conduct with the wounded one is not
above suspicion," she added, with that novel mischievousness that seemed
a return of her lost girlhood. "We must try to do the best we can with
them and for them," she said decidedly, "and meantime I'll see if I
can't arrange John's room for them."

"John's room?"

"Oh, mother is perfectly satisfied; indeed, suggested it. It's larger
and will hold two beds, for 'Ned,' the friend, must attend to him at
night. And, Kate, don't you think, if you're not going out again, you
might change your costume? It does very well while we are alone--"

"Well," said Kate indignantly, "as I am not going into his room--"

"I'm not so sure about that, if we can't get a regular doctor. But he
is very restless, and wanders all over the house like a timid and
apologetic spaniel."

"Who?"

"Why 'Ned.' But I must go and look after the patient. I suppose they've
got him safe in his bed again," and with a nod to her sister she tripped
up-stairs.

Uncomfortable and embarrassed, she knew not why, Kate sought her mother.
But that good lady was already in attendance on the patient, and
Kate hurried past that baleful centre of attraction with a feeling of
loneliness and strangeness she had never experienced before. Entering
her own room she went to the window--that first and last refuge of the
troubled mind--and gazed out. Turning her eyes in the direction of her
morning's walk, she started back with a sense of being dazzled. She
rubbed first her eyes and then the rain-dimmed pane. It was no illusion!
The whole landscape, so familiar to her, was one vast field of dead,
colorless white! Trees, rocks, even distance itself, had vanished in
those few hours. An even shadowless, motionless white sea filled the
horizon. On either side a vast wall of snow seemed to shut out the
world like a shroud. Only the green plateau before her, with its sloping
meadows and fringe of pines and cottonwood, lay alone like a summer
island in this frozen sea.

A sudden desire to view this phenomenon more closely, and to learn for
herself the limits of this new tethered life, completely possessed
her, and, accustomed to act upon her independent impulses, she seized