"I am sure you must be almost as anxious as we are," said Barbara, "though of course you don't know Miss Jessie as well. No one could help loving her." "No, they couldn't," agreed Elsie, in a rather low voice, and then she walked over to the window, and stood with her back to the others, looking out at the falling rain. Nobody talked much during the next half-hour. Marjorie and Barbara both had lumps in their throats, and words did not come easily. Elsie, too, was unusually silent. There was another little excitement when the bell rang again, and Beverly came in. Beverly had been through a great deal during the past two weeks, but boys of eighteen cannot live on high pressure for very long without a reaction setting in. Beverly was a very natural, healthy-minded boy, and the reaction in his case took the form of unusually high spirits. "Don't all have such long faces," he remarked, cheerfully, surveying the solemn little group. "Just make up your minds everything is coming out all right, and you'll see it will. I've got more faith in Uncle George than in any other surgeon in the country. Think of what he did for that English boy we met at the Bells'." "I know Uncle George is wonderful," said Barbara, a trifle more hopeful, "but even he may not be able to cure everybody. You would be just as anxious as Marjorie and I, Beverly, if you knew dear Miss Jessie as well as we do." "I didn't say I wasn't anxious. I only said I didn't see any use in such long faces before you know whether there was anything to be mournful about. How do you do, Miss Elsie? I haven't seen you in a week of Sundays." In his present exuberant spirits, Beverly was quite ready to forget past unpleasantness, but Elsie had not forgotten, as her heightened color and embarrassed manner plainly showed. Beverly went to the piano, and began playing rag-time, with the cheerful desire of raising the drooping spirits of the party. He proposed they should sing college songs, but nobody felt inclined for singing and the attempt proved a dismal failure. "What a very uncomfortable thing suspense is," remarked Barbara, as the clock struck five. "You would say so if you had been through the suspense Marjorie and I have," her brother said. "We know something of what suspense means, don't we, Marjorie?" "Indeed we do," said Marjorie, rousing herself from present anxieties with an effort. "Oh, Beverly, those awful days when you and your uncle were on your way to Arizona, and I couldn't be absolutely sure I hadn't made a mistake about that photo after all. Suppose I had been mistaken, and you had had that terrible disappointment!" "Well, you were not mistaken, you see," broke in Beverly, who felt that the recollection of those days was still too vivid to bear discussion. "Come and sit by me, Babs," and he made room for his sister on the piano stool.