"No," returned Phillipa. "I asked father to find out about them. Mr. Nevins is a reputable banker, a very good judge of loans and is rated quite highly in London. Then he buys curios and pictures, so he must have some taste. Think what that silly girl will have, enough to make any three girls of us fancy ourselves heroines of the Arabian Nights; but the mother can't have any sense." "I think the modistes are largely to blame. No doubt the mother ordered a handsome evening dress, and the woman made it handsome and expensive and quite useless. You don't see Zay Crawford with any such things!" "Zay is beauty unadorned." "And Miss Nevins is ugliness intensified. I am really sorry for her, though she has improved a very little. But when you think of the place she might take in society--" "And the journeys!" "Still, I wouldn't want such a mother." Phillipa went to her room to finish her Latin verses. "Though why you should be compelled to write Latin verses when you can't make decent English rhymes I don't see," she grumbled. She was almost through when the door flew open and shut again with a bang and Louie Howe threw herself on the floor clasping Phillipa's knees, her eyes distraught with terror. "Oh, isn't it horrible!" she almost shrieked. "Those boys had malignant scarlet fever! That one was dying the girl held up, he was choking awfully, and at nine o'clock the other one died. It's all in the morning's paper. I think they hid it away. Miss Vincent picked it up in the library. Oh, what can we do?" "You can stop screaming and get up." Phillipa fairly dragged her up and shook her violently. "Hush! hush!" she commanded. "You'll have the whole faculty in here, and we'll be bundled out bag and baggage. Have a little regard for Zay and me if you have none for yourself." Phillipa drew up the willow rocker and pushed Louie in it. "Don't have hysterics if that is what you're aiming at or I'll douse you with cold water until you're half drowned." Louie was sobbing now. "I can't help it, and think of the dreadful risk we ran! That woman ought to be sent to prison." "That woman was going on with her business, earning her living. We were the fools! How did they know it was scarlet fever?" "Well, she thought it was measles and was doctoring them, but one of them grew so much worse she sent for Dr. Lewis and he was so busy he didn't get there until five, just as the boy died, and the other one hadn't seemed so bad, but he died at nine, and the youngest girl has the fever. Dr. Lewis sent for the undertaker right away and they put something on the bodies and sealed up the coffin and they were to be buried this morning and the clothes to be burned and the house fumigated. Oh, isn't it horrible! The woman ought to go to prison." "After losing her two children?" "Well, to give us all scarlet fever, malignant scarlet fever?" with emphasis. Phillipa was quivering in every nerve. But she _must_ control Louie.