inby's grandson to the spiritual fold. In spite of the
fact that Quin was a fairly decent chap already, whose worst vices were
poker and profanity, she persisted in regarding him as a brand which she
had been privileged to snatch from the burning.

What gave him a yet more intimate claim upon her was the fact that his
heart and lungs were still troublesome, and with any over-exertion on his
part, or a sudden change in the weather, his chest became very sore and
his racking cough returned. At such times Miss Isobel was in her glory.
She would put him to bed with hot-water bottles and mustard plasters and
feed him hot lemonade. Quin took kindly to the coddling. No one had
fussed over him like that since his mother died, and he was touchingly
grateful.

"Say, you'd be a wonder out at the hospital," he said to her on one of
these occasions. "I wish some of those fellows with the flu could have
you to look after them."

Miss Isobel's long, sallow face with its dark-ringed eyes lit up for a
moment.

"There is nothing I should like better," she said. "But of course it's
out of the question."

"Why?"

"Mother doesn't approve of us doing any work at the camp. She did make an
exception in the case of my niece, but Eleanor was so insistent. Sister
and I try never to oppose mother's wishes. It cuts us off from a great
many things; but then, I contend that our first duty is to her."

Miss Isobel's attitude toward her mother was that of a monk to his
haircloth shirt. She acquired so much merit in her friends' eyes and in
her own by her patient endurance that the penance was robbed of half its
sting.

"Things are awful bad out at the hospital now," went on Quin. "A fellow
was telling me yesterday that in some of the wards they only have one
nurse to two hundred patients. The epidemic is getting worse every day.
You-all in town here don't know what it's like where there's so many sick
and so few to take care of 'em."

Miss Isobel, with morbid interest, insisted upon the details. When Quin
had finished his grim recital, she turned to him with scared
determination.

"Do you know," she fluttered, "I almost feel as if I ought to go in spite
of mother's wishes."

"Of course you ought," Quin conceded, "especially when you are keeping a
trained nurse here in the house who doesn't do a thing but carry up trays
and sit around and look at herself!"

"I know it," Miss Isobel admitted miserably. "I've lain awake nights
worrying ov