Something in the face he was watching brought him suddenly forward in his chair. "My dear woman, you don't mean--you can't--" He did not finish his sentence. Mrs. Whitmore opened her eyes and met his gaze unflinchingly. Then she turned her head. "Doctor," she said, "that picture on the wall there at the foot of the bed--it doesn't hang quite straight." "Mrs. Whitmore!" breathed the man incredulously, half rising from his chair. "Hush! Not yet!" The woman's insistent hand had pulled him back. "Why am I here? Where is this place?" There was no answer. "Doctor, you must tell me. I must know." Again the man hesitated. He noted the flushed cheeks and shaking hands of the woman before him. It was true, she must know; and perhaps, after all, it was best she should know through him. He drew a long breath and plunged straight into the heart of the story. Five minutes later a glad voice came from the doorway. "Mother, dearest--then you're awake!" The doctor was conscious of a low-breathed "Hush, don't tell her!" in his ears; then, to his amazement, he saw the woman on the bed turn her head and hold out her hand with the old groping uncertainty of the blind. "Margaret! It is Margaret, isn't it?" Days afterward, when the weary, pain-racked body of the little mother was forever at rest, Margaret lifted her head from her lover's shoulder, where she had been sobbing out her grief. "Ned, I can't be thankful enough," she cried, "that we kept it from Mother to the end. It's my only comfort. She didn't know." "And I'm sure she would wish that thought to be a comfort to you, dear," said the doctor gently. "I am sure she would." Phineas and the Motor Car Phineas used to wonder, sometimes, just when it was that he began to court Diantha Bowman, the rosy-cheeked, golden-haired idol of his boyhood. Diantha's cheeks were not rosy now, and her hair was more silver than gold, but she was not yet his wife. And he had tried so hard to win her! Year after year the rosiest apples from his orchard and the choicest honey from his apiary had found their way to Diantha's table; and year after year the county fair and the village picnic had found him at Diantha's door with his old mare and his buggy, ready to be her devoted slave for the day. Nor was Diantha unmindful of all these attentions. She ate the apples and the honey, and spent long contented hours in the buggy; but she still answered his pleadings with her gentle: "I hain't no call to marry yet, Phineas," and nothing he could do seemed to hasten her decision in the least. It was the mare and the buggy, however, that proved to be responsible for what was the beginning of the end.