of wet pebbles softly
shaken together.

'You haven't sent for a doctor?' she inquired, while she took out her
small clinical thermometer.

'No, indeed; I never send for doctors. Can't afford 'em,' said the young
lady, with a wan grimace. 'Must I put that into my mouth?'

'Yes, please; I must take your temperature. I think, if you let me
prescribe for you, I can see after you as well as a doctor,' Althea
assured her. 'I'm used to taking care of people who are ill. The friend
I've just been staying with in Venice had influenza very badly while I
was with her.'

She rather hoped, after the thermometer was removed, that the young lady
would ask her some question about Venice and her present destination;
but, though so amiable and so grateful, she did not seem to feel any
curiosity about the good Samaritan who thus succoured her.

Althea found her patient less feverish next morning when she went in
early to see her, and though she said that her body felt as though it
were being beaten with red-hot hammers, she smiled in saying it, and
Althea then, administering her dose, asked her what her name might be.

It was Helen Buchanan, she learned.

'And mine is Althea Jakes. You are English, aren't you?'

'Oh no, I'm Scotch,' said Miss Buchanan.

'And I am American. Do you know any Americans?'

'Oh yes, quite a lot. One of them is a Mrs. Harrison, and lives in
Chicago,' said Miss Buchanan, who seemed in a more communicative mood.
'I met her in Nice one winter; a very nice, kind woman, who gives most
sumptuous parties. Her husband is a millionaire; one never sees him. Do
you come from Chicago? Do you know her?'

Althea, with some emphasis, said that she came from Boston.

'Another,' Miss Buchanan pursued, 'lives in New York, though she is
usually over here; she is immensely rich, too. She hunts every winter
in England, and is great fun and is frightfully well up in
everything--pictures, books, music, you know: Americans usually are well
up, aren't they? She wants me to stay with her some day in New York;
perhaps I shall, if I can manage to afford the voyage. Her name is
Bigham; perhaps you know her.'

'No. I know of her, though; she is very well known,' said Althea rather
coldly; for Mrs. Bigham was an excessively fashionable and reputedly
reckless lady who had divorced one husband and married another, and
whose doings filled more scrupulous circles with indignation and
unwilling interest.

'Then I met a dear littl