lips--

"Can you save it? Must you ampu--"

Before the word was completed the surgeon's hand was over her lips,
Whitey brought to the door with a bang, and three pale faces stared at
each other in consternation. Had Sylvia heard? Could she have
overheard? That was the question which was agitating every mind. They
strained their ears for a cry from the sick-room, but no cry came.
Whitey looked at the doctor and made a movement towards the door, and he
bent his head in assent.

"Yes! Go in as if you had forgotten something. She may have fainted.
Poor child, it was enough to make her!"

Tears of remorse were standing in Aunt Margaret's eyes, but she waited
silently enough now while Whitey re-entered the room and strolled across
to the window to pick up the book in which she wrote the daily report.
She smiled at Sylvia as she passed, and Sylvia looked at her quietly,
quite quietly, and the dark eyes showed no signs of tears. Whitey went
back to the doctors with lightened face, and eased their minds by a
definite assurance.

"She heard nothing. She is lying quite still and composed. She cannot
possibly have heard."

They turned and went downstairs to the dining-room. Sylvia heard their
footsteps die away in the distance, the opening and shutting of the
door. The brown eyes shone with unnatural brilliancy, the hot hands
were clasped tightly together beneath the sheet.

"God," she was crying deep down in her soul, "do You really mean it?
I've been very wicked often, I've forgotten You and taken my own way,
but I'm so young--only twenty-one--don't make me lame! I'll be good,
I'll think of other people, I'll be grateful all my life. Don't make me
lame! Think what it means to a girl like me to lose her foot! I have
no mother, nor brothers, nor sisters, and father is far-away. It would
be so dreadful to be shut up here and never, never run about any more.
Have pity on me. _Don't make me lame_!"

It was a cry from the depths of her heart, very different from the
formal prayers which she was accustomed to offer morning and evening--a
plea for help such as she would have addressed to her dear earthly
father in any of the minor difficulties of life, but in this great
crisis of her fate she must needs go straight to the fountain of
comfort--the Great Physician who was able to save the soul as well as
the body.

All the rest of the day, as she lay so quietly on her pillows, she was
talking to Him, pleading