"But she wants you to take it, dear, and I am sure that the best thing you can do for your parents, now, is to be cheerful and happy. You will probably have many long years in which to work for them both; and really, Margery, you are working for them now just as truly as if you were earning money for them." But even Beth's bright reasoning failed to console the girl, and Beth went back to Dolly feeling quite downcast. "There, if I didn't forget your book! Let me tell you the news and then I will go back and get it." "Never mind the book," said Dolly when Beth had told the story. "I feel too wretched to use it tonight. I wish you would tell Constance, though. She may know how to comfort Margery a little, and perhaps she can devise some plan for helping her." But while Constance was sympathetic and kind, she could think of no way for assisting Margery just then. "When she is ready to teach, I can help her, I am sure. I think it likely that she may be able to get a good position in one of the fashionable boarding-schools in New York; then she will not be obliged to leave home." So Margery's friends did all that they could for her in a quiet way, but, after all, they could not carry her burden, and Margery felt in those days as if life were a hard thing. Dolly's headaches had grown no better; they had become perpetual, until Beth, in frightened desperation, wrote to Mrs. Alden. Before her mother reached the college, however, Dolly had been removed to the hospital, and several of the other students were developing symptoms of the same malarial fever that had attacked Dolly. "There is much of this disease in the lower portion of the city. I have been attributing the trouble there to bad drinking water, but that hardly seems to account for the outbreak here, because your drinking water is wonderfully clear and pure." "We are often in that part of the city, though," Beth said, "and we almost always get a drink at the fountain." "That accounts for it, then. How often have you been in the habit of going to that part of Westover?" "Nearly every day. You know that we are required to take outdoor exercise." "We must see that no more mischief is done," the Doctor said, with a grave face. But although the fountain was removed and a new system of drainage introduced, the mischief was already wrought, so far as Dolly was concerned. All of the girls liked her, and were ready to do all in their power to make things easier for her when she returned once more to her classes. Her illness was not serious, but it was tedious and wearisome. Constance copied her own literature notes into Dolly's book, and Margery copied the Greek art. The professors did everything in their power to smooth things, but Christmas found Dolly pale and thin, and utterly aghast at the work she must take up; for the half-yearly examinations to which the juniors were treated would come at the end of January and she was far from being prepared.