"Well, how silly of me!" Mrs. Salisbury said weakly. She sighed,
tried too quickly to sit up, and fainted quietly away again.

This time she opened her eyes in her own bed, and was made to drink
something sharp and stinging, and directed not to talk. While her
husband and daughter were hanging up things, and reducing the
tumbled room to order, the doctor arrived.

"Dr. Hollister, I call this an imposition!" protested the invalid
smilingly. "I have been doing a little too much, that's all! But
don't you dare say the word rest-cure to me again!"

But Doctor Hollister did not smile; there was no smiling in the
house that day.

"Mother may have to go away," Alexandra told anxious friends, very
sober, but composed. "Mother may have to take a rest-cure," she said
a day or two later.

"But you won't let them send me to a hospital again, Kane?" pleaded
his wife one evening. "I almost die of lonesomeness, wondering what
you and the children are doing! Couldn't I just lie here? Marthe and
Sandy can manage somehow, and I promise you I truly won't worry,
just lie here like a queen!"

"Well, perhaps we'll give you a trial," smiled Kane Salisbury, very
much enjoying an hour of quiet, at his wife's bedside. "But don't
count on Marthe. She's going."

"Marthe is?" Mrs. Salisbury only leaned a little more heavily on the