de her, eating her
life out? Or your father raging and hungering, like a pine tree in a
window-pot?" She shook her head sadly. "No, Marcella, till you've killed
thought you'll never be happy--till you've killed feeling--"

"Look here," began Marcella quickly, kneeling beside her aunt and
suddenly holding her stiff body in her quick young arms. "Auntie," she
said, using the diminutive shyly, and even more shamefacedly adding,
"dear--I'm not going to listen to you. So there! I'm going away, and I'm
going to come back and simply _dose_ you with happiness, like we used to
dose the old mare with medicine when she was ill. If you won't take it,
I'll drown you in it. Or else what's the use of my going away?"

"You're going away because you feel it in your feet that you've got to
go, Marcella," said Aunt Janet calmly. The wind roared down the chimney
and sent fitful puffs of smoke out into the room. "If I tried to stop
you, you'd go on hungering to be away."

CHAPTER VI

It was the doctor who saw Marcella on to the _Oriana_ at Tilbury. Aunt
Janet had not suggested coming with her: it had not occurred to her as
the sort of thing that was necessary, nor had Marcella given it a
thought. Left to herself, she would have taken train blithely from
Carlossie to Edinburgh and thence to London--imagining London not very
much more formidable than a larger Carlossie. But the doctor made them
see that it was quite necessary for someone to see her off safely, and
naturally the job fell to him.

The booking of the passage had caused considerable discussion. Aunt
Janet had written to the shipping company asking them to reserve a
saloon berth by the first mail-boat after a certain date. That it took
nearly all the money she had or was likely to have, as far as she could
see, for the rest of her days, did not trouble her in the least. She
could live on nothing, she told herself--and it was absolutely necessary
that Andrew's child should go away, even though she was going to seek
the once-refused charity of a relative, with the maximum of dignity and
with flags flying. But the doctor had a talk with her about it. He had
had three trips as ship's doctor to Australia on P. and O. steamers, and
his imagination reeled at the prospect of Marcella in the average saloon
on a long-distance liner.

"You see," he said, trying hard to be tactful, "if Marcella travels
first class she'll need many clothes. There are no laundries on most of
thes