"I shouldn't worry over this, I think. You know that Dr. Anderson can be trusted. If there is anything you need to know he will tell you. Besides, you are not even sure that they were talking about Philip. There is nothing alarming about a physician's taking a brother practitioner to see a case.... What time will the doctor be here to-morrow? I may wait and see him myself. Now don't worry over it any more." How easy it is to learn to rely on one stronger than ourselves. Margaret went back to the house strengthened and helped. Richard De Jarnette had calmed her fears as he would have quieted Philip. She felt almost humiliated that he should have such power, but she was comforted. After that talk in the arbor it did not seem quite practicable to put into effect her determination to absent herself when he was in Philip's room. In fact, that very night they sat before the open fire which was kindled as night fell, she with Philip in her arms, and he in his arm-chair across from her, and though there was not much conversation between them, there was companionship in his presence.... Their mutual interest in Philip was a bond between them now that she was so isolated from her friends.... He had been very gentle to her in the arbor. "Mama, sing to me," said Philip. And Margaret sang softly the cradle songs he loved. They made a sweet picture as they sat thus. But in the midst of her songs Richard got up abruptly and went into the other room, drawing a great breath when he got there. The nurse had been reading here, but had gone down-stairs. He stood a moment looking around the room. It was strangely decorated, if decoration it could be called. On the walls were Madonna pictures of every name and age. In his present mood it moved him strangely to see them. It seemed as if in her desperate fear of being supplanted she had tried to keep always before Philip the close and tender bond between mother and child. Nothing else could explain all these pictures. His eyes went from one to another, pausing longest before that one of modern times which has been called the "Madonna of the Slums." That seemed to him the truest of them all and to have the most pathos. Here was no Virgin of the Immaculate Conception upheld by a knowledge of her mission,--only the human mother bearing on her arm, divinely strong, the sleeping child. He wanted to take it from her and rest her arm,--her tired arm. There was no halo here,--nothing but the shawl, the insignia of the lowly, about the patient face. He recalled something he had read once about how in the "elder days of art" the masters painted a nimbus round the mother's head, leaving her face often inane and weak; but how later, with a deeper insight if not a subtler skill, he put the halo in the face.