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Dr. Clark shook his head gravely. “She is not improving as fast as I should like to see,” he said. “In fact–er–she seems to have gone backward the past week. You must send her to the country, Miss Langley. The heat here is too trying for her.”

Dr. Clark might as well have said, “You must send her to the moon”–or so Marcella thought bitterly. Despair filled her heart as she looked at Patty’s white face and transparent hands and listened to the doctor’s coolly professional advice. Patty’s illness had already swept away the scant savings of three years. Marcella had nothing left with which to do anything more for her.

She did not make any answer to the doctor–she could not. Besides, what could she say, with Patty’s big blue eyes, bigger and bluer than ever in her thin face, looking at her so wistfully? She dared not say it was impossible. But Aunt Emma had no such scruples. With a great clatter and racket, that lady fell upon the dishes that held Patty’s almost untasted dinner and whisked them away while her tongue kept time to her jerky movements.

“Goodness me, doctor, do you think you’re talking to millionaires? Where do you suppose the money is to come from to send Patty to the country? I can’t afford it, that is certain. I think I do pretty well to give Marcella and Patty their board free, and I have to work my fingers to the bone to do that. It’s all nonsense about Patty, anyhow. What she ought to do is to make an effort to get better. She doesn’t–she just mopes and pines. She won’t eat a thing I cook for her. How can anyone expect to get better if she doesn’t eat?”

Aunt Emma glared at the doctor as if she were triumphantly sure that she had propounded an unanswerable question. A dull red flush rose to Marcella’s face.

“Oh, Aunt Emma, I can’t eat!” said Patty wearily. “It isn’t because I won’t–indeed, I can’t.”

“Humph! I suppose my cooking isn’t fancy enough for you–that’s the trouble. Well, I haven’t the time to put any frills on it. I think I do pretty well to wait on you at all with all that work piling up before me. But some people imagine that they were born to be waited on.”

Aunt Emma whirled the last dish from the table and left the room, slamming the door behind her.

The doctor shrugged his shoulders. He had become used to Miss Gibson’s tirades during Patty’s illness. But Marcella had never got used to them–never, in all the three years she had lived with her aunt. They flicked on the raw as keenly as ever. This morning it seemed unbearable. It took every atom of Marcella’s self-control to keep her from voicing her resentful thoughts. It was only for Patty’s sake that she was able to restrain herself. It was only for Patty’s sake, too, that she did not, as soon as the doctor had gone, give way to tears. Instead, she smiled bravely into the little sister’s eyes.

“Let me brush your hair now, dear, and bathe your face.”

“Have you time?” said Patty anxiously.

“Yes, I think so.”

Patty gave a sigh of content.

“I’m so glad! Aunt Emma always hurts me when she brushes my hair–she is in such a hurry. You’re so gentle, Marcella, you don’t make my head ache at all. But oh! I’m so tired of being sick. I wish I could get well faster. Marcy, do you think I can be sent to the country?”

“I–I don’t know, dear. I’ll see if I can think of any way to manage it,” said Marcella, striving to speak hopefully.

Patty drew a long breath.

“Oh, Marcy, it would be lovely to see the green fields again, and the woods and brooks, as we did that summer we spent in the country before Father died. I wish we could live in the country always. I’m sure I would soon get better if I could go–if it was only for a little while. It’s so hot here–and the factory makes such a noise–my head seems to go round and round all the time. And Aunt Emma scolds so.”