. If they locked him in he would kick the door down.

We had a long conference in the hall, with Bella sitting red-eyed and
objecting to every suggestion we made. And finally we arranged to
shut Jim up in one of the servants' bedrooms with a sheet wrung out of
disinfectant hung over the door. Bella said she would sit outside in
the hall and read to him through the closed door, so finally he gave
a grudging consent. But he was in an awful humor. Max and Dal put on
rubber gloves and helped him over, and they said afterward that the way
he talked was fearful. And there was a telephone in the maid's room, and
he kept asking for things every five minutes.

When the doctor came he said it was too early to tell positively, and he
ordered him liquid diet and said he would be back that evening.

Which--the diet--takes me back to the famine. After they had moved Jim,
Mr. Harbison went back to the telephone, and found everything as it
should be. So he followed the telephone wire, and the rest followed him.
I did not; he had systematically ignored me all morning, after having
dared to kiss me the night before. And any other man I know, after
looking at me the way he had looked a dozen times, would have been at
least reasonably glad to find me free and unmarried. But it was clear
that he was not; I wondered if he was the kind of man who always makes
love to the other man's wife and runs like mad when she is left a widow,
or gets a divorce.

And just when I had decided that I hated him, and that there was one man
I knew who would never make love to a woman whom he thought married and
then be very dignified and aloof when he found she wasn't, I heard what
was wrong with the telephone wire.

It had been cut! Cut through with a pair of silver manicure scissors
from the dressing table in Bella's room, where Aunt Selina slept! The
wire had been clipped where it came into the house, just under a window,
and the scissors still lay on the sill.

It was mysterious enough, but no one was interested in the mystery just
then. We wanted food, and wanted it at once. Mr. Harbison fixed the
wire, and the first thing we did, of course, was to order something to
eat. Aunt Selina went to bed just after luncheon with indigestion, to
the relief of every one in the house. She had been most unpleasant all
morning.

When she found herself ill, however, she insisted on having Bella, and
that made trouble at once. We found Bella with her cheek against