the least pains to modify. 'She looks sick; I'd be worried
about her if I were you. Can't you rouse her?'

'Rouse her? She is always like that. Only she was particularly tired
last night.'

'A healthy young woman oughtn't to get so tired. If she's always like
that she always needs rousing.'

'Don't be ridiculous, Franklin. What do you mean?'

'Why, I'm perfectly serious. I think she looks sick. She ought to take
tonics and a lot of outdoor exercise.'

'Is that all that you can find to say about her?' Althea asked, half
amused and half indignant.

'Why no,' Franklin replied. 'I think she's very attractive; she has a
great deal of poise. Only she's half alive. I'd like to see her doing
something.'

'It's enough for her to be, I think.'

'Enough for you, perhaps; but is it enough for her? She'd be a mighty
lot happier if she had some work.'

'Really, Franklin, you are absurd,' said Althea laughing. 'There is room
in the world, thank goodness, for other people besides people who work.'

'Oh no, there isn't; not really. The trouble with the world is that
they're here and have to be taken care of; there's not room for them.
It's lovely of you to care so much about her,' he went on, turning his
bright gaze upon her. 'I see how you care for her. It's because of
that--for her sake, you know--what it can mean to her--that I emphasise
the side that needs looking after. You look after her, Althea; that'll
be the best thing that can happen to her.'

With all his acuteness, how guileless he was, the dear! She saw herself
'looking after' Helen!

'You might have a great deal of influence on her,' Franklin added.

Althea struggled for a moment with her pride. She liked Franklin to have
this high opinion of her ministering powers, and yet she liked even more
to have the comfort of confiding in him; and she was willing to add to
Helen's impressiveness at the expense of her own. 'I've no influence
with her,' she said. 'I never shall have. I don't believe that any one
could influence Helen.'

Franklin looked fixedly at her for some time as though probing what
there must be of pain for her in this avowal. Then he said, 'That's too
bad. Too bad for her, I mean. You're all right, dear. She doesn't know
what she misses.'

They sat out on the lawn that afternoon in the shade of the great trees.
Mildred and Dorothy, glittering in white, played lawn-tennis
indefatigably with Herbert Vaughan and Captain Merton. Aunt Julia
embro