"We can get anything if Dad and Mother are home by that time," answered Helen. The rest were silent. Kit, sitting at her mother’s desk beside the wide bay window, looked up and frowned at the stuffed golden pheasant on top of the nearest bookcase. Outside snow was falling lightly. The view of the Sound was obscured. A pearly grayness seemed to be settling around the big house as if it were being cut off from the rest of the world by some magic spell. "Hope Dad’s feeling all right by now," Kit said suddenly, pushing back her thick, dark curls restlessly. "They sail from Sanibel Island the 8th. Wasn’t it the 8th, Jean?" "Oh, they’ll be home in plenty of time," Jean exclaimed. "Here we all sit, having the silent mullygrumps when he’s better. Mother said positively in her last letter that he had improved wonderfully the previous week." Helen stared at the long leather couch on one side of the open fireplace. It was over four weeks since her father had lain on it. Throughout the winter there had been day after day of unremitting weakness following his breakdown, and somehow she could not help wondering whether the future held the same. She rose quickly, shaking her head with defiance at the thought. "Let’s not worry, girls. If we all are blue when he comes, he’ll have a relapse." Then Jean spoke, anxiously, tenderly,--her big dark eyes questioning Kit. "What about Mother?" "We’re all worried about Mother, Jean. It isn’t just you at all," Kit spluttered. "But you can be just boiling inside with love and helpfulness, and still not go around with a face like that!" "Like what?" demanded Jean haughtily. "Don’t fight, children, don’t fight," Doris counseled, just as if she were the eldest instead of the youngest. "Remember what Cousin Roxy says about the tongue starting more fires than the heart can put out. You two scrap much more than Helen and I do." "Well, I think," said Helen sedately, "that we ought to remember Mother just as Jean says. She’s almost sick herself worrying over Dad, and there she is, away down in Florida with just the White Hen to talk to." Jean smiled, thinking of the plump little trained nurse, Miss Patterson, so spick and span and placid that the girls had declared they expected her to cluck at any moment. They had nicknamed her the White Hen, and it surely suited her. Even though no Chantecler had arrived yet to claim her, she was the White Hen,--good-tempered, cheerful, attending strictly to business always, but not just what one might call a lovable companion. "She’s too chirpy for anyone who has responsibilities," Jean said. "Note Jean when she has responsibilities," Kit proclaimed. "Jean’s been playing Mrs. Atlas and carrying the rest of us around on her shoulders. And look at her! Where is the merry smile of old, fair sister?"