Saratoga did not agree with Richard. He grew sick first of the water; then of the fare; then of the daily routine of fashionable follies; then of the people; and then, oh! so sick of the petty lectures which Ethelyn gradually resumed as he failed in his attempts to imitate Frank Van Buren and appear perfectly at ease in everybody's presence. Saratoga was a "confounded bore," he said, and though he called himself a brute, and a savage, and a heathen, he was only very glad when toward the last of August Ethelyn became so seriously indisposed as to make a longer stay in Saratoga impossible. Newport, of course, was given up, and Ethelyn's desire was to go back to Chicopee and lie down again in the dear old room which had been hers from childhood. Aunt Barbara's toast, Aunt Barbara's tea, and Aunt Barbara's nursing, would soon bring her all right again, she said; but in this she was mistaken, for although the toast, and the tea, and the nursing each came in its turn, the September flowers had faded, and the trees on the Chicopee hills were beginning to flaunt their bright October robes ere she recovered from the low, nervous fever, induced by the mental and bodily excitement through which she had passed during the last three or four months. Although he knew it was necessary that he should be at home if he would transact any business before the opening of his next session in Washington, Richard put aside all thoughts of self, and nursed his wife with a devotedness which awakened her liveliest gratitude. Richard was not awkward in the sick-room. It seemed to be his special providence, and as he had once nursed and cared for Daisy and the baby brother who died, so he now cared for Ethelyn, until she began to miss him when he left her side, and to listen for his returning step when he went out for an hour or so to smoke and talk politics with his uncle, Captain Markham. With Mrs. Dr. Van Buren and Frank and the fashionable world all away, Richard's faults were not so perceptible, and Ethelyn even began to look forward with considerable interest to the time when she should be able to start for her Western home, about which she had built many delusive castles. Her piano had already been sent on in advance, she saying to Susie Granger, who came in while it was being boxed, that as they were not to keep house till spring she should not take furniture now. Possibly they could find what they needed in Chicago; if not, they could order from Boston.