"It's utter nonsense," he protested, "that I should lie here when I'm perfectly well. Ask the doctor, when he comes to-day, if I may get up to-morrow. If he consents, well and good; but if he doesn't, I'll get up just the same. Dear me, girl," as Elizabeth tried to make him see reason, "my work will be terribly in arrears as it is." Elizabeth and Buff were in the drawing-room when the doctor came that evening. It was a clear, cold March night, and a bright fire burned on the white hearth; pots of spring flowers stood about the room, scenting the air pleasantly. Buff had finished learning his lessons and was now practising standing on his head in the window, his heels perilously near the plate glass. Both he and Elizabeth were in great spirits, the cloud of their father's illness having lifted. Elizabeth had been anxious, how anxious no one knew, but to-night she welcomed the doctor without a qualm. "Come to the fire, Dr. Nelson," she said; "these March evenings are cold. Well, and did you find Father very stiff-necked and rebellious? He is going to defy you and get up to-morrow, so he tells me. His work is calling him--but I don't suppose we ought to allow him to work for a time?" Then the doctor told her that her father's work was finished. With great care he might live for years, but there was serious heart trouble, and there must be no excitement, no exertion that could be avoided: he must never preach again. * * * * * A week later Elizabeth wrote to Arthur Townshend: "Thank you for your letters and your kind thoughts of us. Aunt Alice wasn't hurt, was she? that we didn't let her come. There are times when even the dearest people are a burden. "Father is wonderfully well now; in fact, except for occasional breathless turns, he seems much as usual. You mustn't make me sorry for myself. I am not to be pitied. The doctor says 'many years'; it is so much better than I dared to hope. I wonder if I could make you understand my feeling? If you don't mind a leaf from a family journal, I should like to try. "'Tell me about when you were young,' Buff sometimes says, and it does seem a long time ago since the world began.... When I remember my childhood I think the fairy pipes in Hans Andersen's tale that blew everyone into their right place must have given us our Mother. She was the proper-est Mother that ever children had. "'_Is Mother in?_' was always our first question when we came in from our walks, and if Mother was in all was right with the world. She had a notion--a blissful notion as you may suppose for us--that children ought to have the very best time possible. And we had it. Funny little happy people we were, not penned up in nurseries with starched nurses, but allowed to be a great deal with our parents, and encouraged each to follow our own bent.