Harbour Street--the rooms where
Camilla had declared they would be so cosy and comfortable, enjoying a
rest from all housekeeping cares.

And as far as the material details of their life was concerned they
would have been more than content, though it was a new experience to
them to be even temporarily without a home; and now and then Camilla
and Bessie grew a little anxious about Margaret, and wondered if they
were taking as good care of her as mother would have done. For the
little girl looked very pale and delicate sometimes, and her appetite
was fitful.

'I wonder if it is Mrs Newing's cooking,' said Camilla to her
confidante, Bessie. 'At home we could always get some nice little thing;
mother is so clever in that way, with father having been so long ill.
But here it would be impossible to try to cook anything ourselves.'

'And whatever we do, we mustn't worry mother about Margaret,' said
Bessie. 'Mother needs all the cheering possible to keep up her spirits,
with dear father being so suffering still. Oh, Camilla, I _wonder_ if we
shall soon have better news?'

Things had not improved, even to the limited extent which was all that
Captain Harper had counted upon, as rapidly as the former time that he
had been an inmate of the private hospital for three months. He was
weaker than then, and perhaps his intense anxiety to benefit by the
effort that had in every sense cost them all so dear, was against him.

The doctors, so wrote Mrs Harper to her elder girls, now spoke of three
months more, not as desirable but as a necessity. And how it was to be
managed she could not see. Furthermore, to give a chance of anything
approaching cure, or rather lasting improvement, the regulation visit to
the German baths _must_, they now declared, be followed up by a winter
in a mild, dry climate.

'Of this,' said the mother, 'we are not even _thinking_. The three more
months here are all we can contemplate, and I dare not tell your father
how impossible even that seems. It is out of the question, as he is, to
move him to an ordinary hospital where I could not be with him. I
believe if we did so he would give up the struggle and quietly resign
himself to leaving us.'

'Camilla, he _must_ stay,' said Bessie. 'There is one thing, these
people do want to keep on the house longer?'

'For two months--not three,' said Camilla, 'and we have not yet given
them a decided answer.'

'Then let us take it upon ourselves _to_ decide,' said