as working morning
and night at the old cottage, to prepare for the arrival of her son.
Such scrubbing and scouring! Such taking up of carpets and laying them
down again, as if the darling old thing were expecting a prince!

"It ought to be Sunny Lodge indeed before she's done with it," said the
Doctor.

"I'm sure it will," I said. "It always was, and it always will be."

"And how are we ourselves," said the doctor. "A little below par, eh?
Any sickness? No? Nausea? No? Headache and a feeling of lassitude, then?
No?"

After other questions and tests, the old doctor was looking puzzled,
when, not finding it in my heart to keep him in the dark any longer, I
told him there was nothing amiss with my health, but I was unhappy and
had been so since the time of my marriage.

"I see," he said. "It's your mind and not your body that is sick?"

"Yes."

"I'll speak to Father Dan," he said. "Good-bye! God bless you!"

Less than half an hour after he had gone, Alma came to me in her softest
mode, saying the doctor had said I was suffering from extreme nervous
exhaustion and ought to be kept from worries and anxieties of every
kind.

"So if there's anything I can do while I'm here, dearest, . . . such as
looking after the house and the servants. . . . No, no, don't deny me;
it will be a pleasure, I assure you. . . . So we'll say that's settled,
shall we? . . . You dear, sweet darling creature!"

I was too much out of heart to care what happened, but inside two days I
realised that Alma had taken possession of the house, and was ordering
and controlling everything.

Apparently this pleased such of the servants as had anything to gain by
it--the housekeeper in particular--for Alma was no skinflint and she was
making my husband's money flow like water, but it was less agreeable to
my maid, who said:

"This is a nice place to be sure, where the mistress takes no interest
in anything, and the guest walks over everybody. She'll walk over the
mistress herself before long--mark my word but she will."

It would be about a week after our arrival at Castle Raa that Price came
to my room to say that a priest was asking for me, and he was such a
strange-looking thing that she was puzzled to know if his face was that
of a child, a woman or a dear old man.

I knew in a moment it must be Father Dan, so I went flying downstairs
and found him in the hall, wearing the same sack coat (or so it seemed)
as when I was a child and made cup