don't see anything ridiculous in it. A physician need not charge
anything unless he chooses, or she; and if I choose to make Louise my
guest here it's quite the same as if she were my guest at home."

"I don't like you to have such a guest," said Mrs. Green. "I don't see
what claim she has upon your hospitality."

"She has a double claim upon it," Grace answered, with a flush. "She
is in sickness and in trouble. I don't see how she could have a better
claim. Even if she were quite well I should consider the way she
had been treated by her husband sufficient, and I should want to do
everything I could for her."

"I should want her to behave herself," said Mrs. Breen dryly.

"How behave herself? What do you mean?" demanded Grace, with guilty
heat.

"You know what I mean, Grace. A woman in her position ought to be more
circumspect than any other woman, if she wants people to believe that
her husband treated her badly."

"We ought n't to blame her for trying to forget her troubles. It's
essential to her recovery for her to be as cheerful as she can be. I
know that she's impulsive, and she's free in her manners with strangers;
but I suppose that's her Westernism. She's almost distracted. She was
crying half the night, with her troubles, and kept Bella and me both
awake."

"Is Bella with her now?"

"No," Grace admitted. "Jane's getting her ready to go down with us.
Louise is talking with a gentleman who came over on the steamer
with her; he's camping on the beach near here. I didn't wait to hear
particulars."

When the nurse brought the little girl to their door, Mrs. Green took
one hand and Grace the other, and they led her down to tea. Mrs. Maynard
was already at table, and told them all about meeting Mr. Libby abroad.

Until the present time she and Grace had not seen each other since they
were at school together in Southington, where the girl used to hear so
much to the disadvantage of her native section that she would hardly
have owned to it if her accent had not found her out. It would have been
pleasanter to befriend another person, but the little Westerner suffered
a veritable persecution, and that was enough to make Grace her friend.
Shortly after she returned home from school she married, in that casual
and tentative fashion in which so many marriages seem made. Grace had
heard of her as travelling in Europe with her husband, from whom she was
now separated. She reported that he had known Mr. Libby in hi