it?"

"Nothing whatever."

"Well, I can't stand it much longer," said Clemency with an obstinate
look. "As for the pain in my side, that's an awful lie; I haven't the
ghost of a pain. I can't stand it much longer. Here's Uncle Tom. You are
not going to tell him I said anything about it?"

"Of course, I am not," answered James. He began to feel that he was
entangled in a web of secrecy, and his feeling of irritation increased.
He would have gotten out of it and spent Christmas at his own home, but
Doctor Gordon had an unusual number of patients suffering from grippe,
and pneumonia was almost epidemic, and he felt that he should not
leave. It was the second week of the new year when James, returning from
a call at a near-by patient, whither he had walked, found Mrs. Ewing in
the greatest distress. It was ten o'clock at night, and she was pacing
the living-room. Immediately when he entered she ran to him. "Oh," she
gasped, "Clemency, Clemency!"

"Why, what is it?" asked James. Clemency had not been at the
dinner-table, but he had supposed her sulking, as she had been doing of
late, and that she had taken advantage of Doctor Gordon's absence at a
distant patient's to remain away from the table.

"She begged so hard to go out, and said the pain was quite well," gasped
Mrs. Ewing, "that I said she might go and see Annie, and here it is ten
o'clock at night, and Tom has gone to Grover's Corner, and may not be
home until morning, and Aaron is with him, and I had no one to send. I
thought I would not say anything to you. I thought every minute she