think I am going to wait all night?"

One of Quin's first acts upon coming into the house had been to aid and
abet Madam in her determination to use her injured leg. Dr. Rawlins had
infuriated her by his pessimistic warnings and his dark suggestions of a
wheeled chair.

"We'll show 'em what you can do when you get that cast off," Quin had
reassured her with the utmost confidence. "I've limbered up heaps of
stiff legs for the fellows. It takes patience and grit. I got the
patience and you got the grit, so there we are!"

Now that the cast was off, a few steps were attempted each night, during
which painful operation Miss Enid fled to another room to shed tears of
apprehension, while Miss Isobel hovered about the hall, ready to call the
doctor if anything happened.

"Is that better?" he asked now, as he got Madam to her feet and carefully
adjusted the crutches. "If you say they are too short, I'll tell you what
the little man said when he was teased about his legs. 'They reach the
ground,' he said; 'what more can you ask?'"

"Shut up your nonsense, and mind what you are doing!" cried Madam. "My
leg is worse than it was yesterday. I can't put my foot to the ground."

"Oh, yes, you can," Quin insisted, coaxing her from the bed-post to the
dresser. "You are coming on fine. I never saw but one person do better.
That was a guy I knew in France who never danced a step until he lost a
leg, and then his cork leg taught his other leg to do the fox-trot."

"Didn't I tell you to hush!" commanded Madam, laughing in spite of
herself. "You will have me falling over here in a minute."

When she was back in her chair and Quin was leaving, she beckoned to him.

"What about Mr. Ranny?" she asked in an anxious whisper. "Was he at the
office to-day?"

Quin had been dreading the question, but when it came he did not evade
it. Randolph Bartlett's lapses from grace were coming with such alarming
frequency that the sisters' frantic efforts to keep the truth from their
mother only resulted in arousing her suspicion and making her more
unhappy.

"No," said Quin; "he hasn't been there for a week. He's never going to be
any better as long as he stays in the business. You don't know what he
has to stand from Mr. Bangs."

"I know what Mr. Bangs has had to stand from him."

"Yes; but Mr. Ranny's never mean. He is one of the kindest, nicest
gentlemen I ever met up with. But he can't stand being nagged at all the
time, and he feels that he