In one of his downcast moods one evening he strolled over to the Mansion to take a message from Edith to Julia. His family had already gone down to Beverly, but Edith, with her usual conscientiousness, let hardly a week pass without sending some special message to Gretchen. The evening was one of the close and sultry evenings of early spring, and as Philip drew near he was pleased to hear the voices of Brenda and Julia. The two were seated on a rattan settle that had been drawn out into the vestibule, and upon greeting them Philip discovered Pamela and Miss South near by. After delivering Edith's message the conversation drifted to the ever-engrossing subject. "I hardly expected to find so many of you here," said Philip. "Surely some of you intend to go as nurses to help your suffering countrymen." "Angelina," responded Miss South, "is the only one of us who is desperately in earnest about becoming a nurse." "So far as I can remember she has all the qualities that a nurse ought not to have." "Oh, you are rather severe; she is not quite so bad, yet I doubt that she would make a good nurse. But she really is interested, and I have known her to make many sacrifices this spring to help the soldiers." "She thinks that the Red Cross costume would be very becoming, and that is the secret of her interest," said Brenda, with a slight tinge of bitterness. "What do you hear from the seat of war?" asked Philip, turning to Brenda, as if to change the subject. "Oh, I never hear anything. Agnes and Ralph have letters, but I have too much to do to bother about the war." Brenda's tone belied her words, and Philip wisely attempted no rejoinder. A moment later she made an excuse for leaving the party in group. "Ralph," explained Julia, "expects to go abroad in a few days; his uncle is very ill in Paris, and it is necessary that he should see him. I believe that Agnes is not sorry that he has decided to go. Otherwise, I am sure that he would soon be starting for Cuba." "It's hard for any one to stay behind," said Philip; and then as Inez and Nellie came out from the house with a message for Miss South and Julia, the duty of entertaining Philip fell on Pamela. He never knew just how it happened, but soon he was opening his heart to her more freely than he had ever opened it to any one else; and when their little talk was over he felt that at least one person realized that in staying North at a time when men were needed in the South he was truly trying to do his best. Undoubtedly Julia understood this, and Miss South, and all sensible people who saw that Mr. Blair's health was now so precarious; but Pamela made it so clear to Philip that his duty to his father was really the higher duty, that he left the Mansion in a much more cheerful frame of mind than that in which he had approached it.