“Hester! you do not know what you are saying!” March came around and faced her, trying to quiet her by cold, stern authority. It was thrown away. She raved on—still tearing away with her tiny fierce hands at her heaving throat as if to give speech freer vent. “I do know—oh, we are graduates in these frolicsome escapades! It is inconsiderate in him—” with a horrid laugh—“to give his wife, his wife’s sister, and the family factotum such a job as carrying him all this way. To do him justice, he seldom forgets the decencies so entirely. If I had my way, he should lie here all night. Only his wife would come out and stay with him. What are you staring at me for, Mr. Gilchrist? Here is our family skeleton! Does it frighten you out of your wits?” Her croaks of laughter threatened dissolution to the fragile frame. It was an awful, a repulsive exhibition. “It is you who have lost yours!” rejoined March gravely. “Your father may be dying, for aught you know. A hundred men fell in the streets of New York to-day, overcome by the heat—and we are wasting precious minutes in wild, nonsensical talk. If you will let Homer take you to the house, and compose yourself sufficiently to prepare your mother for the shock of seeing her husband brought in insensible, we may save him yet. Go! and send Homer back at once.” The wild eyes surveyed him piercingly; with a low, meaning laugh, she sank back among her cushions. “I think”—she said distinctly and deliberately—“that you are the best man God ever made! Go on, Tony!”