"I shouldn't mind so much at home. But in somebody else's house—" "Well, yes, that does make matters more trying, I grant. It can't be helped. The more quiet you can keep your knee, the sooner it is likely to improve. A great deal depends on yourself. Not much sleep last night, I'm afraid." "I couldn't. I kept waking with a start every time I dropped off. If I moved ever so little, the pain woke me." Mr. Wells took his leave, and Euphrasia was left to her own cogitations. She had time enough for them that day and in days following. Far more solitude was hers than had ever before fallen to her lot; yet even solitude is better than a grudged companionship. Mrs. Johnston, while expressing all polite concern for her guest's condition, never visited the room without letting it appear how great an exertion she counted the effort. Letitia never spent half-an-hour there without showing a desire to be elsewhere. Worse than the worst bodily suffering was Euphrasia's consciousness of being looked upon as a mere burden. No doubt the Johnstons, mother and daughter, were in a general sense sorry for her, but they were a great deal more sorry for themselves. To have a guest in the house requiring care and nursing was simply a "bother" in their eyes. And if they could politely have got rid of their unwished-for invalid, they would gladly have done so. Euphrasia realised this to the core of her being. The very servants, pampered and trained in self-indulgence, objected to the "extra work," and seeing this feeling plainly in their mistress, they did not hesitate to speak it out plainly among themselves. A lazy young housemaid had been told off to wait upon Euphrasia; and due orders were given to her, but nobody saw whether these orders were carried out. In point of fact, they often were not. And Euphrasia was allowed to wait long for many things that she needed. Proudly, she would not ask or remind the girl. At least it should not be said of her that she gave unnecessary trouble. "And I need not have come! I might have escaped all this! If I had just given it up when I really felt as if I ought, I might be at home now, and quite well—not boxed up here where nobody wants me!" Such regrets haunted Euphrasia unceasingly. She would not let her parents know what had happened. Why should she? It would only make them anxious, and could do no good. Nay, in her father's condition, the additional worry might even break him down altogether. So reasoned Euphrasia, putting bravely aside her own longings for home sympathy. One short note she sent, to notify the fact of her arrival, carefully worded, and dealing only with generalities. No mention was in it of her accident; and a request for silence stopped any communication from Mrs. Johnston.