e old lady turned away her head from the rice pudding in a kind of
gesture of repulsion. She was in the fractious period of influenza,
and Maggie had had a hard time with her.

Nothing particular had happened for the last ten days. Mrs. Baxter's
feverish cold had developed, and she was but now emerging from the
nightdress and flannel-jacket stage to that of the petticoat and
dressing-gown. It was all very ordinary and untragic, and Maggie had
had but little time to consider the events on which her subconscious
attention still dwelt. Mr. Cathcart had had no particular news to give
her. Laurie, it seemed, was working silently with his coach, talking
little. Yet the old man did not for one instant withdraw one word that
he had said. Only, in answer to a series of positive inquiries from
the girl two days before, he had told her to wait and see him for
herself, warning her at the same time to show no signs of perturbation
to the boy.

And now the day was come--Easter Eve, as it happened--and she would
see him before night. He had sent no answer to her first letter; then,
finally, a telegram had come that morning announcing his train.

She was wondering with all her might that afternoon as to what she
would see. In a way she was terrified; in another way she was
contemptuous. The evidence was so extraordinarily confused. If he were
in danger of insanity, how was it that. Mr. Cathcart advised her to
get him down to a house with only two women and a few maids? Who was
there besides this old gentleman who ever dreamed that such a danger
was possible? How, if it was so obvious that she would see the change
for herself, was it that others--Mr. Morton, for example--had not seen
it too? More than ever the theory gained force in her mind that the
whole thing was grossly exaggerated by this old man, and that all that
was the matter with Laurie was a certain nervous strain.

Yet, for all that, as the afternoon closed in, she felt her nerves
tightening. She walked a little in the garden while the old lady took
her nap; she came in to read to her again from the vellum-bound little
book as the afternoon light began to fade. Then, after tea, she went
under orders to see for herself whether Laurie's room was as it should
be.

It struck her with an odd sense of strangeness as she went in; she
scarcely knew why; she told herself it was because of what she had
heard of him lately. But all was as it should be. There were spring
flowers o