and insisting vehemently on Ethel's going to London.

Ethel had never felt so helpless and desolate, as with Margaret thus
changed and broken, and her father absent.

"My dear," said Dr. Spencer, "nothing can be better for both parties
than that he should be away. If he were here, he ought to leave all
attendance to me, and she would suffer from the sight of his distress."

"I cannot think what he will do or feel!" sighed Ethel.

"Leave it to me. I will write to him, and we shall see her better before
post time."

"You will tell him exactly how it was, or I shall," said Ethel abruptly,
not to say fiercely.

"Ho! you don't trust me?" said Dr. Spencer, smiling, so that she was
ashamed of her speech. "You shall speak for yourself, and I for myself;
and I shall say that nothing would so much hurt her as to have others
sacrificed to her."

"That is true," said Ethel; "but she misses papa."

"Of course she does; but, depend on it, she would not have him leave
your sister, and she is under less restraint without him."

"I never saw her like this!"

"The drop has made it overflow. She has repressed more than was good
for her, and now that her guard is broken down, she gives way under the
whole weight."

"Poor Margaret! I am pertinacious; but, if she is not better by post
time, papa will not bear to be away."

"I'll tell you what I think of her by that time. Send up your brother
Richard, if you wish to do her good. Richard would be a much better
person to write than yourself. I perceive that he is the reasonable
member of the family."

"Did not you know that before?"

"All I knew of him, till last night, was, that no one could, by any
possibility, call him Dick."

Dr. Spencer was glad to have dismissed Ethel smiling; and she was the
better able to bear with poor Margaret's condition of petulance. She had
never before experienced the effects of bodily ailments on the temper,
and she was slow to understand the change in one usually so patient and
submissive. She was, by turns, displeased with her sister and with her
own abruptness; but, though she knew it not, her bluntness had a bracing
effect. She thought she had been cross in declaring it was nonsense to
harp on her going to London; but it made Margaret feel that she had been
unreasonable, and keep silence.

Richard managed her much better, being gentle and firm, and less ready
to speak than Ethel, and he succeeded in composing her into a sleep,
which rest