keeping
anything from me?"

"Not a thing. And I'm as sure as a man can well be. That's why I don't
prescribe a sanatorium for her, or anything of that sort. All she needs
is a rational, every-day life of the health-making kind, such as
Charlotte and I can teach her--Charlotte even more effectively than I.
Evelyn needs simply to build up a strong physical body; then these
troublesome nerves will take care of themselves. Believe me, Thorne,
it's refreshingly simple. I've not even a drug to suggest for your
sister. She doesn't need any."

"But, Andy, it doesn't seem to me I can let Evelyn stay here with you
all winter--the first winter of your married life. You two ought to be
alone together."

"No. Charlotte and I haven't set out to go through life--even this first
year of it--alone together. We are together, no matter how many we have
about us. It will be only in the day's work if we keep Evelyn with us,
and it's a sort of work that will pay pretty well, I fancy."

"It certainly will--in more than one kind of coin," and Lee gripped his
friend's hand.

So it was settled. Evelyn agreed so joyously to the plan that her
brother's last doubt of its feasibility was removed, and he went away a
day later with a heart so much lighter than the one he had brought with
him that it showed in his whole bearing.

"God bless you and your sweet wife, Andy Churchill," he wrote back from
his first stopping-place, and when Churchill showed the letter to
Charlotte she said, happily:

"We'll make the copper motto come true with this guest, won't we? Evelyn
will be a very pretty girl when she loses that fragile look. Her eyes
and expression are beautiful. Do you know, she accepts everything I say
as if I were the Goddess of Wisdom herself."

"Charlotte," said Mrs. Peyton, a few days later, coming hurriedly into
Charlotte's own room, where that young woman was busy with various
housewifely offices, "I've had a telegram. I'm so upset I don't know
what to do. My sister is sick and her husband is away, and she's sent
for me. I'm not able to do nursing--I'm not strong enough--but I don't
see but that I must go."

"I'm very sorry your sister is ill," said Charlotte. "Tell me about
her."

Mrs. Peyton told at length. "And what I'm to do with the children," she
said, mournfully, "I don't know. Sister doesn't want them to come. But
here I'm away up North and sister's out West, and the children couldn't
go home alone. Besides, there's nowh