angry; now I am sorry. Why do you all stand
round and stare at me like that? Can anybody be more than sorry, or do
more than give back what they took?"

"It is sometimes impossible to give back what we took away, Flower,"
replied the Doctor, very gravely.

He was standing in the midst of his children; his face was white; his
eyes had a strained look in them; the strong hands with which he clasped
little Pearl trembled. He did not look again at Flower, who shrank away
as if she had received a blow, and crept upstairs.

For the rest of the day she was lost sight of; there was a great deal of
commotion and excitement. Polly, when she was brought home, was
sufficiently ill and suffering to require the presence of a doctor;
little Pearl showed symptoms of cold, and for her, too, a physician
prescribed.

Why not Dr. Maybright? The children were not accustomed to strange faces
and unfamiliar voices when they were ill or in pain. Polly had a curious
feeling when the new doctor came to see her; he prescribed and went
away. Polly wondered if the world was coming to an end; she was in
greater pain than she had ever endured in her life, and yet she felt
quiet and peaceful. Had she gone up a step or two of the mountain she so
longed to climb? Did she hear the words of her mother's favorite song,
and was a Guide--_the_ Guide--holding her childish hand?

The hour of the long day passed somehow.

If there was calm in Polly's room, and despair more or less in poor
Flower's, the rest of the house was kept in a state of constant
excitement. The same doctor came back again; doors were shut and opened
quickly; people whispered in the corridors. As the hours flew on, no one
thought of Flower in her enforced captivity, and even Polly, but for
Maggie's ceaseless devotion, might have fared badly.

All day Flower Dalrymple remained in her room. She was forgotten at
meal-times. Had David been at home, this would not have been the case;
but Helen had sent David and her own little brothers to spend the day at
Mrs. Jones's farm. Even the wildest spirits can be tamed and brought to
submission by the wonderful power of hunger, and so it came to pass that
in the evening a disheveled-looking girl opened the door of her pretty
room over the porch, and slipped along the passages and downstairs.
Flower went straight to the dining-room; she intended to provide herself
with bread and any other food she could find, then to return to her
solitary musin