and weak. Still, there was that one chance, if only she would take it.

But her mother wouldn't listen. "My dear, it would cost a hundred pounds."

"How do you know what it would cost?"

"Oh," she said, "I know." She was smiling above the sheet that was tucked
close up, tight under her chin, shutting it all down.

Sir James Pargeter would cost a hundred pounds. Harriett couldn't lay her
hands on the money or on half of it or a quarter. "That doesn't matter if
they think it'll save you."

"They _think;_ they think. But I _know._ I know better than all
the doctors."

"But Mamma, darling----"

She urged the operation. Just because it would be so difficult to raise
the hundred pounds she urged it. She wanted to feel that she had done
everything that could be done, that she had let nothing stand in the way,
that she had shrunk from no sacrifice. One chance in a hundred. What was a
hundred pounds weighed against that one chance? If it had been one in a
thousand she would have said the same.

"It would be no good, Hatty. I know it wouldn't. They just love to try
experiments, those doctors. They're dying to get their knives into me.
Don't _let_ them."

Gradually, day by day, Harriett weakened. Her mother's frightened voice