I never thought I was superstitious, but you know how over-particular and over-careful you are about anything that's awfully important. Your anxiety borders on superstition before you know it, and when somebody accuses you, you simply don't care, you're so eager to have everything propitious. Well, I somehow got to believing that that child's life in Chicago that Will was striving so hard to save and the life of my hidden joy had something to do with each other. The idea obsessed me; I couldn't get it out of my head, fanatical and ridiculous as I knew a sensible person would call it, and I kept writing to Will as if that millionaire's son were mine. Will said it was a good thing that he wasn't a practising physician if I took his cases so much to heart as all that; but, just the same, he told me that my letters did fill him with hope and courage. All during this period, while Ruth was eating out her soul for Bob, and Will was eating out his soul for the little sick boy, and I was eating out my soul for a gift I'd have died to possess for a day, no one would have guessed from Ruth's and my pleasant good-mornings, our casual calm and undisturbed conversations at meal-time, and Will's cheerful paragraphs, that we were all living through crises. Ruth and I with our anxieties grew very near to each other at this time. She was a lot of comfort to me and I tried to appreciate the feelings of a proud girl in love with a man who has not spoken. During the evenings that Bob called I sat up alone in Will's study, embroidering a centrepiece for the dining-room table. Evening after evening my fingers fairly ached to get out the rustling tissue paper patterns that Madge had left. But I wouldn't let myself--I wasn't going to be heart-broken--I wouldn't let myself put a needle to a single bit of nainsook. It was on Saturday, January fifteenth, at ten o'clock at night, that Will's special delivery letter came. My fingers trembled as they tore at the envelope. I closed the study door to be alone. "If the little boy has died," I said out loud, "I mustn't be superstitious. I simply mustn't." But oh, he hadn't died! He hadn't died! Will's letter was one triumphant song from beginning to end. The little boy had passed the crisis; he was going to live; and live strong and well and normal. The miracle had been performed; the serum had done its magic part; there had been just the response that Will had dared to rely on; everything had been gloriously successful; and he was coming home in five days!