With Elizabeth life went on about as usual. She missed Valentine sadly, and she felt almost jealous of her cousin Marjorie, who would always have the pleasure of his society. Miss Rice was engaged to stay all day now. It was shown to the child plainly enough that she was not to be trusted. She resented this, although she knew there was reason for it. She did hate to be watched, she said to herself. For months the child brooded over her lonely existence, and the strange fate of having a father who did not wish to see her, and a brother who did not live with her, and who, she was quite sure, preferred his cousin to his sister. Day after day when the postman rang the door-bell she looked for an answer to her letter, and day after day she was disappointed, until she grew thin and pale, and her aunts at length became alive to the fact that she was not well. Thoroughly alarmed, they sent for the family physician. He knew something of the state of affairs in Fourth Street, and of the unnatural life which the little girl had thus far lived, and he determined to seize this opportunity for improving matters. "The child should live in the country," he said, when Elizabeth had been sent from the room. "Just what I thought," said Miss Herrick, in a relieved tone. "She will go out to our place next week. It is nearly April, so it will not be unbearable." "But that won't do. Does she have any playmates there?" "No, not many." "I thought not. And does her governess go too?" "Certainly. We could not get along without Miss Rice. My sister and I are away so much." "Precisely. And now, my dear Miss Herrick, I am going to speak plainly to you. Unless you send that child away she will die before your very eyes. She should be in some happy home where she would have companions of her own age. Boarding-school would be better than nothing. Send her to boarding-school." "My dear doctor! My niece at a boarding-school? Never!" "Why not? There are plenty of good schools where she would be happy and well cared for. Then she must go somewhere else. Send her to her mother's relatives in the South. They live in the country, don't they? Let her grow up with Valentine. The brother and sister had much better be together." "It is out of the question, doctor. I do not want to give up my niece, and I cannot consent to her being brought up in that large family of boys and girls. She would grow very rough among them." "The rougher the better, say I," said the doctor, rising to go, "and I tell you plainly, Miss Herrick, unless you do something of that sort there is no saving the child. Drugs won't keep her alive. She needs no medicine, but a natural, free child's life, and the sooner you send her to get it the better. She behaves precisely as if she had something on her mind. What is it?"