Margaret realised that she had grown to love her wayward charge,
and all the manifold demands and inconveniences of illness were
swallowed up in anxiety during the first anxious weeks. She allowed not
only one, but two of "those dreadful nurses" to take possession of her
spare rooms, submitted meekly to their orders, and saw her domestic
rules and regulations put aside without a murmur of protest; but when
the crisis was safely passed, and recovery became only a matter of time,
the old fussy nature reasserted itself, and her eyes were open to behold
the dire results of a long illness.

This bright October morning she came stooping into Sylvia's bedroom, a
slight woman with a narrow bent back, brown hair smoothed neatly down on
each side of a withered, dried-up face, with a patch of red on the cheek
bones, and sunken brown eyes roving restlessly to right and left. She
wore a black stuff dress, a satin apron with pockets and an edging of
jet, and knitted mittens over her wrists--a typical old lady of the
ancient type. Yet as she stood beside the bed there was a curious
likeness to be observed between her face and the one on the pillow; and
Sylvia recognised as much, and felt a thrill of dismay at the thought
that some day she, too, would be frail and bent, and wear a cap and
mittens, and have rheumatic joints, and attacks of bronchitis if by
chance she was so imprudent as to go out without putting on goloshes, a
woollen "crossover," and a big silk muffler beneath her mantle. To one-
and-twenty it seemed an appalling prospect, and one to be shunted into
the background with all possible speed.

"Well, my love, and how are you this morning? Much better, I hear. A
good drop in temperature," said Aunt Margaret, pecking her niece's cheek
with her lips, and answering her own question without waiting for a
reply, as her custom was. "Nurse tells me that you will soon be up
again, and I'm sure it is time. This room needs a regular spring
cleaning, and as for the new drugget on the landing--three new spots of
milk this morning, to say nothing of what has gone before! If I had
known you were going to be ill I would have made the old one last
another year, for it is sheer waste of money buying new things to have
them ruined in six months. The last one was down thirteen years, and
looked very little worse than this does now!"

"Father will buy you another. You must put it down as one of the
expenses. He won't mind so lon