sisters
tolerated only as an improvement on silence. They had no wish to visit
Attica, but retired upstairs to their bedroom at the earliest possible
moment to mingle tears of misery.

"I--I feel as if I should burst!" cried Ruth expressively. "My heart is
so full that I can't bear another thing! Everything seems to have
happened at once, and I feel crushed!"

"It's so bad that it must get better! it can't possibly get worse!" said
Mollie, persistently hopeful in the midst of her misery.

But alas, her prophecy was not justified by events! Mrs Connor crawled
about the house for another week, looking every day smaller and more
fragile; and then a morning came when she could not rise from bed, and
all other anxieties seemed to dwindle in significance when the illness
took a serious turn, and her precious life itself seemed in danger.

CHAPTER THIRTY FOUR.

THE SILVER LINING.

Ruth and Mollie constituted themselves nurses, Mollie, as the more
robust of the two, insisting upon taking as her share the arduous night
duties. Trix found time to attend to the housekeeping between school
hours, the younger children were housed by sympathetic friends, and on
the once noisy house settled down that painful silence which prevails
when a fight is being waged between life and death.

At the beginning of the illness Ruth was dismayed to see a stranger in
Dr Maclure's place, but on the third day he appeared, bringing with him
an atmosphere of comfort and security. One felt now that all that was
possible from human skill and care would be done for the dear invalid,
and, busy man as he was, Dr Maclure found time for several visits a
day, until the first acute anxiety was passed. Until then his
intercourse with Ruth had been solely that of physician and nurse, but
one morning, when the invalid's temperature and pulse both showed a
satisfactory decline, he walked into the dining-room on the way to the
door, and motioned Ruth to a seat.

"Sit down for a moment. I want to have a little talk with you. It is a
doctor's duty to see that a nurse does not overtax her strength, and you
are looking very ill these last few days. I am going to prescribe a
tonic which I want you to take regularly, and you must contrive to have
a walk each day, and, if possible, a rest in the afternoon. You might
lie down on the sofa while your mother is dozing."

Ruth flushed, and shook her head in pretty disclaimer.

"Oh, I am all right! Do