“_You_ take care of him?” Mrs. Wilson exclaimed, when she had recovered from her first astonishment and surprise. “You take care of him? It is impossible. Why, it needs a strong man to manage him; he is just awful; he’s got it in his head that he is sea-sick, and rolls and pitches with the boat, and calls to Bob in the upper berth, and insists upon my bringing him _la surr_, whatever that may be——” “Yes, that’s _sister_, that’s French,—that’s I,” Gertie said. “I am his sister, and have come to nurse him. His father is in Europe, his eldest sister Julia is in Florida, the next one is in Scotland, and so there was no one to come but me. Will you take me to him, please?” After this explanation there was no demurring on Mrs. Wilson’s part. If that young girl was his sister she had a right to nurse her brother, and she led the way to the third floor, where in the room looking into the area Godfrey was still rolling with the ship, and occasionally mimicking and calling to some _cats_ fighting on the fence in the yard below. These cats had been the bane of Godfrey’s life even before he was sick. Regularly every night they came, sometimes two, sometimes three, and sometimes half a dozen, and made the neighborhood hideous with their music. Godfrey had thrown his boot-jack at them, and his poker and soap-dish and bits of coal, and when all these failed he had tried the effect of fire-crackers and frightened the people opposite, who thought him a madman trying to fire the house! And still the cats fought on, and since Godfrey’s illness they had been terrible, and he was up on his elbow “sca-ating” to them, when the door opened and Gertie was ushered in. He knew her, and forgetting the cats and the ship, and Bob in the upper berth, he hailed her advent with a cry of joy. “_La Sœur, La Sœur_,” he cried, “you’ve come,—you’ve come at last, and now you’ll stop that infernal noise and make the ship stand still. I’m pounded nearly to a jelly with all this rolling and pitching.” He held his arms toward her, and she went to him and laid her cool hands on his burning brow, and pushed back his tangled curls, but did not kiss him. She could not bring herself to do that, even if she were his sister, but she held his hot hands in hers and tried to soothe and quiet him, and told him she would kill the cats and make the ship stand still, and talked to him till he grew quiet and fell away to sleep. When the doctor came, he was told that Mr. Schuyler’s sister was there, and Gertie blushed and felt herself a guilty thing when he addressed her as Miss Schuyler, and gave directions about the medicines she was to give, and asked if there was no older person to come in her place. “None but the housekeeper, and Godfrey prefers me,” she said, while Godfrey, who was listening, chimed in: “That’s so. I’d rather have Gertie than the whole world besides. She’s a trump,—she’s a brick,—she’s a——”