ad nearly
forgotten. Hattie Campbell--that's her name, isn't it?--telephoned to
know if you had come back from the country yet. That was yesterday. I
said we expected you to-day, and she told me to say she was coming to
see you."

The next afternoon toward three o'clock Hattie and her father drove to
the square in an open carriage, Hattie carrying a great bunch of violets
for Lloyd. The little invalid was well on the way to complete recovery
by now. Sometimes she was allowed to walk a little, but as often as not
her maid wheeled her about in an invalid's chair. She drove out in the
carriage frequently by way of exercise. She would, no doubt, always limp
a little, but in the end it was certain she would be sound and strong.
For Hattie and her father Lloyd had become a sort of tutelary
semi-deity. In what was left of the family she had her place, hardly
less revered than even the dead wife. Campbell himself, who had made a
fortune in Bessemer steel, a well-looking, well-groomed gentleman,
smooth-shaven and with hair that was none too gray, more than once
caught himself standing before Lloyd's picture that stood on the
mantelpiece in Hattie's room, looking at it vaguely as he clipped the
nib from his cigar.

But on this occasion as the carriage stopped in front of the ample pile
of the house Hattie called out, "Oh, there she is now," and Lloyd came
down the steps, carrying her nurse's bag in her hand.

"Are we too late?" began Hattie; "are you going out; are you on a case?
Is that why you've got your bag? We thought you were on a vacation."

Campbell, yielding to a certain feeling of uneasiness that Lloyd should
stand on the curb while he remained seated, got out of the carriage and
stood at her side, gravely listening to the talk between the nurse and
her one-time patient. Lloyd was obliged to explain, turning now to
Hattie, now to her father. She told them that she was in something of a
hurry. She had just been specially called to take a very bad case of
typhoid fever in a little suburb of the City, called Medford. It was not
her turn to go, but the physicians in charge of the case, as sometimes
happened, had asked especially for her.

"One of our people, a young woman named Miss Wakeley, has been on this
case," she continued, "but it seems she has allowed herself to contract
the disease herself. She went to the hospital this noon."

Campbell, his gravity suddenly broken up, exclaimed:

"Surely, Miss Searight, th