till. Gone!

Gone, in an hour, all the dreaming and hoping. No Margar in a cleaned
coat would run about the decks of the steamer--

Martie pressed her hand over her dry and burning eyes. She wondered
that she could think of these things and not go mad.

The days went by; time did not stop. Wallace remained ill; Teddy had a
cold, too. Mrs. Converse and John and Adele were there, all
sympathetic, all helpful. They were telling Martie that she must keep
up for the others. She must drink this; she must lie down.

Presently the front room, so terribly occupied, was more terribly
empty. Little Margaret Bannister was laid beside little Mary and Rose
and Paul Converse at Mount Kisco. Children, many of them, died thus
every year, and life went on. Martie had the perfect memory, and the
memory of Adele's tears, of Mrs. Converse's tears, of John's agony of
sympathy.

Then they all went out of her life as suddenly as they had entered it.
Only the old doctor came steadily, because of Teddy's cold and
Wallace's cold. Martie worked over their trays, read fairy-tales to
Teddy, read the newspaper to Wallace, said that she felt well, she HAD
eaten a good lunch, she WAS sleeping well.

When the first suspicion of Wallace's condition came to her she was
standing in the kitchen, waiting for a kettle to boil, and staring
dully out into a world of frozen bareness. Margaret had been with her a
week ago; a week ago it had been her privilege to catch the warm little
form to her heart, to kiss the aureole of gold, to listen to the shaken
gurgle of baby laughter--

The doctor came out from Wallace's room; Martie, still wrapped in her
thoughts, listened to him absently.... pneumonia. Suddenly she came to
herself with a shock, repeating the word. Pneumonia? What was he
saying? But, Doctor--but Doctor--is Mr. Bannister so ill?

He was very ill; gravely ill. The fact that taken in time, and fought
with every weapon, the disease had gained, augured badly. Martie
listened in stupefaction.

She suggested a nurse. The old doctor smiled at her affectionately.
Perhaps to-morrow, if he was no better, they might consider it.
Meanwhile, he was in excellent hands.

A strange, silent day followed. Martie looked at her husband now with
that augmented concern that such a warning brings. He slept, waked,
smiled at her, was not hungry. His big hand, when she touched it, was
hot. Teddy, coughing, and with oil-saturated flannel over his chest,
played with