"Um! Well," said Whitey vaguely, "you must expect to look very slight after lying in bed for so long, but it doesn't matter about that. You won't trouble about appearances, so long as you feel well and strong again." "Yes, I shall!" said the invalid stubbornly. She turned her head on one side and stared intently at the long plaits of hair which trailed over the pillow--her "Kenwigs" as she had dubbed them, after Charles Dickens's immortal "Miss Kenwigses," who are pictorially represented in short frocks, pantaloons, and tight plaits of hair, secured at the ends by bows of ribbon. "My Kenwigs look very thin," she said anxiously. "I used to have three thick coils. People's hair doesn't come out after typhoid fever, does it, Whitey? I shall be furious if mine does." "Oh, hair generally comes out a little in autumn," replied Whitey easily. "Now you have looked at yourself quite long enough. I will put back the glass and prepare some food while your aunt comes to see you, but I shall tell her not to talk too much, for the doctor won't let you be moved if you are looking tired and exhausted." Sylvia sighed to herself, for interviews with Aunt Margaret were a decided trial in these days of convalescence, when every nerve seemed on edge and ready to be jarred. She was nearly twenty-two, and for the first year after leaving school the dear old dad had been in England, and she had had the most delightful time travelling about with him. He always declared that he was a poor man, that tea was doing so disgracefully badly, that he expected to retire into the workhouse in the course of the next year, but, all the same, he never appeared to be short of money, and the travelling was done in the most comfortable and luxurious of fashions. Sylvia was his only child, and in his eyes was the most beautiful and accomplished creature in the world, so that it was a trying experience to be domiciled with an elderly maiden aunt, whose ideas were as early Victorian as her furniture, who had forgotten what it felt like to be young, and was continually aggrieved because her niece had not learned to be old.