At ten o'clock the next morning she sat behind her little breakfast
table--it was daintily munitioned with a glass coffee machine, a
grapefruit and a plate of toast--waiting, over _The Times_, for Rush to
wake up. She looked more seraphic than ever, enveloped in a white turkish
toweling bathrobe and with her hair in a braid. Her brother lay on the
divan just as she had left him the night before. Presently the change in
his breathing told her that he was struggling up out of the depths of
sleep. She looked over at him and saw him blinking at the ceiling. When
his gaze started round her way, she turned her attention to the busy
little coffee machine which opportunely needed it.

It was a minute or two before he spoke. "Is that really you, Mary?"

She smiled affectionately at him and said, "Hello," adding with just an
edge of good-humored mischief, "How do you feel?"

He turned abruptly away from her. "I feel loathsome," he said.

"Poor dear, of course you do. I'll tell you what to do. I've got a nice
big bathroom in there. Go in and take a cold one." Then--"You've grown
inches, Rush, since you went away but I believe you could still get into
a suit of my pajamas--plain ones, not ruffly. Anyhow, I've another big
bathrobe like this that you could roll up in. You'll be just in time for
the coffee. You won't know yourself by then."

"I wish I didn't," he said morosely.

There wasn't much good arguing with that mood, she knew, so she
waited a little.