. Why, it might make all
the difference in the world, he was gratefully considering.

When he came into the room where Amy was sleeping she awoke and sat up
in bed, rubbing sleepy eyes blinded by the light. "Poor dear," she
murmured at sight of his face, "so tired?"

He sat down on the bed; now that he was home, too tired to move. "Pretty
tired. Woman died."

"Oh, Deane!" she cried. "Deane, I'm _so_ sorry."

She reached over and put her arms around him. "You couldn't help it,
dear," she comforted. "You couldn't help it."

Her sympathy was very sweet to him; as said by her, the fact that he
couldn't help it did make some difference.

"And you had to be there such a long time. Why it must be most morning."

"Hardly that. I've been at the Hollands' too--talking to Ted. Poor
kid--it's lonesome for him."

"Who is he?" asked Amy.

"Why--" and then he remembered. "Why, Ruth Holland's brother," he said,
trying not to speak consciously. "The father's very sick, you know."

"Oh," said Amy. She moved over to the other side of her bed.

"They're going to send for Ruth."

Amy made no reply.

He was too utterly tired to think much about it--too worn for acute
sensibilities. He sat there yawning. "I really ought to write to Ruth
myself tonight," he said, sleepily thinking out loud, "but I'm too all
in." He wanted her to take the letter off his conscience for him. "I
think I'd better come to bed, don't you, honey?"

"I should think you would need rest," was her answer.

She had turned the other way and seemed to be going to sleep again.
Somehow he felt newly tired but was too exhausted to think it out. He
told himself that Amy had just roused for the minute and was too sleepy
to keep awake. People were that way when waked out of a sound sleep.

CHAPTER FOUR

The next evening Dr. Franklin got home for dinner before his wife had
returned from her tea. "Mrs. Franklin not home yet?" he asked of Doris,
their maid; he still said Mrs. Franklin a little consciously and liked
saying it. She told him, rather fluttered with the splendor of it--Doris
being as new to her profession as he to matrimony--that Mrs. Blair had
come for Mrs. Franklin in her "electric" and they had gone to a tea and
had not yet returned.

He went out into the yard and busied himself about the place while
waiting: trained a vine on a trellis, moved a garden-seat; then he
walked about the house surveying it, after the fashion of the happy
house