the cake. I'll light the
candles."

Doctor Churchill came out alone for the cake. It stood ready upon the
table, Charlotte's greatest success--a big, old-fashioned orange
"layer-cake," with pale yellow icing, twenty-three pale yellow candles
surrounding it in a flaming circle, and one great yellow Marechal Niel
rose in the centre.

"Whew-w, that's a beauty!" cried Doctor Churchill. "Did you make it,
Fieldsy?"

"Indeed I didn't," denied Mrs. Fields, with great satisfaction. "Miss
Charlotte made it herself, and I didn't know but she'd go crazy over it,
first for fear it wouldn't turn out right, and then for joy because it
had."

The doctor handed it about with a face so beaming that Doctor Forester
leaned back in his chair and regarded his young colleague quizzically.

"You make this cake, Churchill?" he asked.

The doctor laughed. "It was joy enough to bring it in," he said.

"Who did make it?" demanded Forester. "It was no caterer, I know."

Charlotte attempted to escape quietly from the room, but Lanse barred
the way. "Here she is," he said, and turned his sister about and made
her face the company. A friendly round of applause greeted her, mingled
with exclamations of surprise. They all knew Charlotte, or thought they
did. To most of them this was a new and unlooked-for accomplishment.

"It's not half so good as the sort Celia makes," murmured Charlotte, and
would hear no more of the cake. But Celia, in her corner, said softly to
Doctor Forester:

"It's going to be worth while, my knee, for the training Charlotte is
getting. She'll be a perfect little housekeeper before I'm about again."

"It's going to be worth while in another way too," returned her friend,
with an appreciative glance at the face which always reminded him of her
mother's, it was so serenely sweet and full of character.

"It is? How?" she asked, eagerly, for his tone was emphatic.

"I have few patients on my list who learn so soon to bear this sort of
thing as quietly as you are bearing it," he said. "Don't think that
doesn't count." Then he rose to go.

Celia hardly heard the leave-takings, her mind was so happily busy with
this bit of rare praise from one whose respect was well worth earning.
And half an hour afterward, as Lanse stooped to gather her up and carry
her up-stairs to bed, she looked back at Captain Rayburn, who still sat
beside her couch, and said, with softly shining eyes:

"The colonel _almost_ wouldn't be the secon