Milly had tried valiantly to feel a proper anxiety, but she was sharply disappointed at having her talk with Lis interrupted just at the crucial point when he had seemed ready to pledge his aid to her still unexplained plan. Her own mother had often fainted, so it did not strike her as particularly alarming to hear of Miss Charity’s sudden collapse. Of course she’d be all right in the morning, after a good night’s sleep. But if only—_only_ it hadn’t had to happen at just this special moment! She directed a pleading glance at Lis as he passed her chair, and spoke in a half whisper. “May I tell you my plan when you come back, Lis? After your mother and Erica go, I mean? I do need advice awfully, and—there doesn’t seem to be anyone else who cares what I do.” Lis nodded, smiling down into the raised, tense young face with his gentlest expression. Milly looked particularly like a forlorn and lost black kitten at that moment, and all that was chivalrous and kindly in the boy responded to the appeal. “‘Course you can,” he said. “But we all care, really, Milly, and want to help. You’ll find that out some day.” Erica’s quick ears had caught every word of Milly’s whispered plea and Lister’s low-toned, emphatic rejoinder, and her own eyes opened a little wider with a touch of curiosity, that was swiftly followed by resentment. So Milly Thorne was having secrets with Lis already. Probably telling him long tales of how Tommy and she and the rest of their little group left her out, and abused her. And that very afternoon when she—Erica—had tried to tell him the real version of the difference between them, he hadn’t agreed with a word she’d said; had tried to talk about Milly being a “sweet girl” and misunderstood, and similar ridiculous nonsense. It was really too bad of old Lis. Stupid, too. If Tommy were only at home, they’d be able to make him see, together, that Milly had actually started in repelling all friendly advances from the very start. Erica looked rather defiantly over at Milly, still curled up comfortably in her chair, and debated whether or not to come right out with a straightforward question or two. It might clear the air a bit, if she did. But the swift thought of Aunt Charity alone at home, sick, and needing her, decided her to postpone the discussion she foresaw any opening of the subject would be sure to entail. She hesitated, bit her lip, and began, half-heartedly, “Milly—I——” Milly had bent over to pick up her dropped book, and she did not trouble to look up at the sound of her name. “Well?” she asked, coolly, sitting up at last, a trifle flushed, and apparently more absorbed in straightening some crumpled page corners than in anything Erica might choose to say.