he
was too busy, too absorbed in her patients to give more than a
passing thought to even her most intimate cousin. And besides,
Weldon--She pulled herself together sharply.

"Of course I want you, Cooee dear. It is only a bit sudden, and I am
trying to think what to do with you."

Now and then Ethel turned wayward. This was one of the times.

"If you didn't know what to do with me, Alice, then why did you ask
me to come?"

"But I didn't," Alice responded, too astonished to modify her denial
into a polite form of fibbing.

Ethers tone was gently superior.

"Oh, yes; you did."

"When?"

"When you were leaving home. You said then that I must be sure to
come up to spend a week with you, early in the winter." Then her
accent changed. "You poor tired child!" she said, as she rose and
crossed to her cousin's side. "This work is too hard for you; you
look as if you had been fighting the Boers themselves, instead of
merely enteric and bullet holes. I think it is just as well that I
am here to look out for you, for a few days."

Alice lifted her hand to the hand that lay against her cheek.

"I am glad to see you, Cooee dear. I am only so surprised that it
makes me slow to tell you so. If you can sleep here, to-night, I can
find a better place for you in the morning."

"This will do," Ethel answered, while she slowly drew the pins from
her hat. "It is neat, even if it isn't spacious. Really, Alice, I
should have let you know; but it was only just as I was starting
that I found I could come at all. Father is at home, and mother is
unusually well, and I thought I would best make the most of the
opportunity."

Crossing the room to the table, she stood with her back to her
cousin, while she smoothed the feathers in her hat. Then, without
turning, she asked abruptly,--

"How is Mr. Weldon?"

"Better."

"Out of all danger?"

"Yes. Not that he has been in much danger, anyway."

"Oh, I thought--"

Then silence fell.

Alice, meanwhile, was busy with a swift calculation. Five days, in
these troubled times, for a letter to go from Johannesburg to Cape
Town; five days since Ethel could have left Cape Town. And her one
letter to Ethel since Weldon's arrival had been posted just three
days before.

"How did you know Mr. Weldon was here?" she asked sharply.

Ethel's back was still turned towards her. Nevertheless, she could
see the scarlet tide mounting to the ears and to the roots of the
vivid gold hair.

"Why