Molly and Katherine were busy at the Homestead in those days, Sally and Ruth in their own little houses; but Edith was at the brick cottage a great deal. In spite of all Peter's loving care, and the treatment of a great doctor whom Sylvia had insisted she should see in London, she was not very strong, and found that she must still let the long days slip by quietly, while the white hands, that had once been so plump and brown, grew steadily whiter and slimmer. She came upon Sylvia one sultry afternoon, folding and sorting little clothes, arranging them in neat, tiny piles in the scented, silk-lined drawers of a new bureau, and after she had helped her put them all in order, with hardly a word, she leaned her head against Sylvia's and whispered: "I do wish there were some for me." "I know, dear; but you're very young yet. Many wives are glad when this doesn't happen right away. Sally is." "I know. But, you see, I feel that perhaps there never will be any for me--and that seems really only fair--doesn't it?" Sylvia was silent. Her sympathy would not allow her to tell all the London doctor had said to her about her young sister-in-law; neither would it allow her to be untruthful. But certain phrases he had used came back to her with tragic intensity. "Many a woman who can recuperate almost miraculously from organic disease fails to rally from shock--we've been overlooking that too long."--"Every sleepless night undoes the good that the sunshine during the daytime has wrought, and after many sleepless nights the days become simply horrible preludes to more terrors."--"I can't drug a child like that to a long life of uselessness--make her as happy as you can, but let her have it over with as quickly as Nature will allow it--or take her to some other man--I can't in charity to her tell you anything else." So Sylvia and Peter made her "as happy as they could," and that they hoped at times was very happy, indeed; but the look of dread never left her eyes for long, and the tired smile which had replaced her ringing laugh came less and less often to her pale lips.