He was helping them out of the car, now, at the village station, and
they went up the long steps to the street. All three walked on
without more remark, for a little way. Then Marion broke out in her
odd fashion,--

"Ray Ingraham! you've got a home and everything sure and
comfortable. Just tell me what you'd do, if you were a widow and
fatherless or anything, and nobody took you in charge."

"The thing I knew best, I suppose," said Rachel, quietly. "I think
very likely I could be--a baker. But I'm certain of this much," she
added lightly. "I never would make a brick loaf; that always seemed
to me a man's perversion of the idea of bread."

A small boy was coming down the street toward them as she spoke,
from the bake-shop door; a brick loaf sticking out at the two ends
of an insufficient wrap of yellow brown paper under his arm.

As Ray glanced on beyond him, she caught sight of that which put
the brick loaf, and their talk, instantly out of her mind. The
doctor's chaise,--the horse fastened by the well-known strap and
weight,--was standing before the house. She quickened her steps,
without speaking.

"I say," called out the urchin at the same moment, looking up at her
as he passed by with a queer expression of mixed curiosity and
knowing eagerness,--"Yer know yer father's sick? Fit--or sunthin'!"

But Ray made no sign--to anybody. She had already hurried in toward