came and laid her soft hands on her head. “Nothing can help her or her mother, either, unless they make an effort,” Mrs. Hayden said, with a toss of her head, and a flash of her black eyes. “Spleeny and notional both of them as they can be; call it nervous, if you like; what’s nervousness but fidgets? I was never nervous; but if I’d give up every time the weather changes, or I felt a little weak, I might have prostration, too. There’s Harry, my husband, would have died long ago if I had not kept him up just by my own energy and will. I make him sleep with the windows open, and he takes a cold bath every morning at six o’clock, and eats oatmeal for his breakfast, with a cup of hot water instead of coffee or tea.” “And does he thrive on that diet? Is he well and strong?” Bee asked, and Mrs. Hayden replied: “Well and strong? No: he could not be that in the nature of things, he comes from a sickly stock; but he keeps about, which is better than lying in bed and moping all the time.” How strong and full of life Mrs. Hayden was, and so unsympathetic that Beatrice did not wonder Mrs. Morton shivered and shrank away even from the touch of her large, powerful hands. “I am sometimes wicked enough to wish she might be sick herself, or at least nervous, so as to know how it feels,” Mrs. Morton said, after her cousin had gone. “She thinks I can do as she does, and the thing is impossible. My health is destroyed, and I sometimes fear I shall never be well again.” She had failed since Beatrice saw her, and her eyes looked so large and glassy as she lay upon the pillow, and her cough was so constant and irritating, that to talk of effort and oatmeal to her seemed preposterous and cruel. What she needed was rest, and nursing, and care, and change of thought and occupation, and these she could not have in their fullest extent at the parsonage, with poverty and a sick mother, and bustling, irritable Aunt Nancy to act as counter influences. She must be taken entirely away, and amused, and nursed, and petted, and Beatrice began to see the first step of that vague plan formed in Rothsay, and which she meant to carry out.