nd
inexcusable curiosity. "Francis! Now we'll know what it really was
that ailed him--the nervous spells, you know? I always _told_ you it
wasn't fits!"

"How do you know it isn't?" said Francis. "Peggy hasn't said."

"She wouldn't be so interested if it was," said Marjorie triumphantly.
"It takes an old and dear wife to stand _that_ in a man."

They had no business to be deflected from Peggy and her temper by any
such consideration; but it was a point which had occupied their letters
for a year, off and on, and there had been bets upon it.

"Let me see, I suppose those wagers stand--was it candy, or a Hun
helmet?" said Francis.

"Candy," said Marjorie. "But it was really the principle of the thing.
Ask her."

Francis turned back to Peggy, who was becoming angrier and angrier; for
when you start forth to rescue any one, it is annoying, even as Logan
found it, to have the rescue act as if it were nothing to her whether
she was rescued or not.

"Now, what really does ail him, Pegeen?" he asked affectionately. "Did
you see him, or don't you know?"

"Of course I saw him--am I not nursing him? And of course I know!
Poor man, the journey up here nearly killed him."

"How? It seemed like a nice journey to me," said Marjorie
thoughtlessly.

"There's no use pretending you're happy," said Peggy relentlessly. "I
know you're not. It's very brave, but useless."

"But has he fits?" demanded Marjorie with unmistakable intensity.

"He has not," said Peggy scornfully. "I don't know where you'd get the
idea. He fainted this morning when he tried to get up. He didn't come
down to breakfast, and we thought him tired out, and let him lie. But
after awhile, perhaps at nine or so, we thought it unnatural that any
one should be asleep so long. So I tiptoed up, because when you're as
fat as mother it does wear you to climb more stairs than are needful.
And there was the poor man, all dressed beautifully, even to his
glasses with the black ribbon, lying across the bed, in a faint."

"Are you sure it was a faint?" the Ellisons demanded with one voice.

Peggy looked more scornful, if possible, than she had for some time.

"We had to bring him to with aromatic spirits of ammonia, and slapping
his hands. And the doctor says it's his heart. That is, it isn't
really his heart, but his nerves are so bad that they make some sort of
a condition that it's just as bad as if he had heart-trouble really.
Simulated heart-tr