commission, at that.

"Very well, my dear," said his wife, and took up the tale in her swift,
soft voice.

"You can fancy, my dear Miss Braithwaite, how intensely his mother has
felt about it."

"Indeed, yes!" said Phyllis pitifully.

"Her whole life, since the accident, has been one long devotion to her
son. I don't think a half-hour ever passes that she does not see him.
But in spite of this constant care, as my husband has told you, he grows
steadily worse. And poor Angela has finally broken under the strain. She
was never strong. She is dying now--they give her maybe two months more.

"Her one anxiety, of course, is for poor Allan's welfare. You can
imagine how you would feel if you had to leave an entirely helpless son
or brother to the mercies of hired attendants, however faithful. And
they have no relatives--they are the last of the family."

The listening girl began to see. She was going to be asked to act as
nurse, perhaps attendant and guardian, to this morbid invalid with the
injured mind and body.

[Illustration: "NO," SAID MRS. DE GUENTHER GRAVELY. "YOU WOULD NOT. YOU
WOULD HAVE TO BE HIS WIFE"]

"But how would I be any better for him than a regular trained nurse?"
she wondered. "And they said he had an attendant."

She looked questioningly at the pair.

"Where does my part come in?" she asked with a certain sweet directness
which was sometimes hers. "Wouldn't I be a hireling too if--if I had
anything to do with it?"

"No," said Mrs. De Guenther gravely. "You would not. You would have to
be his wife."

IV

The Liberry Teacher, in her sober best suit, sat down in her entirely
commonplace chair in the quiet old parlor, and looked unbelievingly at
the sedate elderly couple who had made her this wild proposition. She
caught her breath. But catching her breath did not seem to affect
anything that had been said. Mr. De Guenther took up the explanation
again, a little deprecatingly, she thought.

"You see now why I requested you to investigate our reputability?" he
said. "Such a proposition as this, especially to a young lady who has no
parent or guardian, requires a considerable guarantee of good faith and
honesty of motive."

"Will you please tell me more about it?" she asked quietly. She did not
feel now as if it were anything which had especially to do with her. It
seemed more like an interesting story she was unravelling sentence by
sentence. The long, softly lighted old room, with