“Well,” laughed Jean, “it surely has some disadvantages, for every single one wants something different at the same identical moment, and that is comical now and then, but we like being a tribe ourselves. I think the more one has to divide their interests and sympathies, the more it comes back to them in strength. Cousin Roxy said that to me once, and I liked it. She said no human beings should have all their eggs in one nest, but make a beautiful omelet of them for the feeding of the multitude. Isn’t that good?” Carlota had not seen Cousin Roxy yet. With Billie down seriously ill, the Judge’s wife had shut out the world at large, and instituted herself his nurse in her own sense of the word, which meant not only caring for him, but enfolding him in such a mantle of love and inward power of courage that it would have taken a cordon of angels to get him away from her. Still, those were long anxious days through the remainder of April. Mrs. Gorham and Jean managed the other house, while Mrs. Robbins helped out at the sick room. There was a trained nurse on hand too, but her duties were largely to wait on Cousin Roxy, and as Mrs. Robbins said laughingly, it was the only time in her life when she had seen a trained nurse browbeaten. Kit was restless and uneasy over her chum’s plight. She would saddle Princess and ride over on her twice a day to see what the bulletins were, and sometimes sit out in the old fashioned garden watching the windows of the room where Cousin Roxy kept vigil. She almost resented the joyous activity of the bees and birds in their spring delirium when she thought of their comrade Billie, lying there fighting the fever. And oddly enough, the old Judge would join her, he who had lived so many years ignoring Billie’s existence, sit and hold her hand in his, gazing out at the sunlight and the growing things of the old garden, and now and then giving vent to a heavy sigh. He, too, missed his boy, and realized what it might mean if the birds and bees and ants and all the rest of Billie’s small brotherhood, were to lose their friend. Jean never forget the final night. She had a call over the telephone from her mother about nine, to leave Mrs. Gorham in charge, and come to her. “Dear, I want you here. It’s the crisis, and we can’t be sure what may happen. Billie’s in a heavy sleep now, and the old Doctor says we can just wait. Cousin Roxy is with him.”