Helen laughed, too, in sympathy, and then it came back to her how nicely Guy had spoken to the children, telling them that what was fun to them was suffering to poor kitty, and impressing upon them how unkind and cowardly it was to be cruel to any living creature. They talked on thus, this big and little sister, until twilight had come. Then Helen put the child down from her lap, and sent her off to the nursery for her supper. As she turned back into the room, her eyes could just discern the outline of the frame upon the mantel, but although the photographs within it were quite obscured by the dusk, Guy's face rose before her with startling distinctness. She dropped into a chair, and a dismal little laugh broke from her. "Oh, dear, I wish Gladys and Nan had both kept still. Now I don't know what I do want." Week followed week monotonously, with little to mark the flight of time save the arrival of letters from Jean and the Appletons. Jean wrote cheerfully, declaring that she was much better and in excellent spirits, but Mrs. Appleton's reports were much less encouraging. "Jean never complains," she wrote, "and seems filled with a restless desire to keep constantly on the move, but she still looks very fragile, and I sometimes fear that all at once she will break down completely. However, you must not be anxious, about her, for perhaps I am needlessly so. Mrs. Fay expects to return home at Christmas time, and I imagine that by then Jean will be quite ready to accompany her." The last week in November Helen went to town to spend Thanksgiving with the Hills. "It seemed almost selfish to take you away from Nathalie," Eleanor said, as they drove rapidly away from the station through the noisy, crowded streets, "but I was longing for a sight of someone from Hetherford, and I thought it would be such fun to begin to do our Christmas shopping together. A little later the shops are so terribly overcrowded."