Toward the end of February Anthony Bell sickened of a cold and kept continually in his room sitting over his fire. The sound of his coughing went through the house, and of his scolding voice as he assailed Siver for, as he named them, his trifling ways. After a week he was no better, and the fact came to Theodosia in her preoccupation as a vague trouble. A vague sense of impending demands weighted her bow and her pencil. Writing chords all morning at her table a load bore heavily upon her hand, unrecognized or undefined. A dream-like unrest followed her as she passed her grandfather’s door or mounted the staircase, as she turned back to her studies after the departure of her friends. She went to his room often between her goings and comings. She would stand beside his fire and offer sympathy or question him. Had he tried this remedy or that? Unprepared for care she met this small demand with a slight vexation, or she set herself to prepare some comfort for him, or some diversion. He would soon be better, she assured him. But there came a day when he was worse, when he kept his bed, and Theodosia called a physician, Dr. Muir. She went often to his bedside, offering to read, to talk, to prepare foods. Anthony seemed troubled, and as the days went by he continually called for papers from his desk or for letter-files from a cupboard in a back room upstairs. He seemed unable to find some paper although he searched endlessly, or he would fall asleep with the documents scattered over his bed or falling from his lax hands. One day an old friend, a Mr. Reed, from the bank, called and sat with him for an hour. When the visitor had gone Anthony seemed more than ever troubled, searching again for the missing paper, falling asleep. As Theodosia sat with her father at supper on the evening after the banker’s visit she spoke of her grandfather’s worry, opening the subject with Horace in abstracted earnestness. The house was disturbed since her grandfather’s illness and she wanted relief. “I wish you’d stop in to see Grandfather tonight,” she said. “He’s sick and he seems to have some matter to trouble his mind. I think you’d better talk with him a little. He’s worried.” “Tell him I’ll take him on a trip next summer to the Virginia Ocean. A ship glides down the water on silken satin sails. Tell him to think about that and he’ll drop off right away. Tell him to think of silken satin sails. The silken sad uncertain. Tell him not to think about the silken sad uncertain, but tell him to think of silken satin sails. Nothing is uncertain. All is certain. I’m right.” “I’m worried myself,” Theodosia said after a little. “Grandfather is real sick. He needs advice maybe. He’s lost heart. He’s got some trouble on his mind.”