“Well, it simply baffled all the doctors,” Momma said in a tone not altogether boastless. “I don’t know how to describe it. It’s just a kind of gener’l gone-ness. I got no heart for anything--no appatite for my vittles, no int’rest in the house or church work or the heathen or the fambly. I don’t want to go to bed nights and I don’t want to get up mornings. Always been a fiend on housekeepin’, but I don’t much care now whether things are in their place or not. Dust don’t worry me like it used to. I’m all dusty myself. No special aches or pains, but I just don’t feel good anywheres. “Want to cry all the time and I don’t know why. Hate to go outdoors and hate to stay in. Poppa drives me nearly crazy with everything he does and says, but I drive myself crazier still. I ain’t friends with myself or anybody. Want to die and can’t bear the thought of that either. “It’s just a kind of all wrongness everywhere, if you can make anything out of that.” To her amazement, Ella said: “I know just how you feel and you’ve come to the right place to be cured.” * * * * * It was not altogether pleasant to have Ella claim a share in Momma’s wonderful disease and to speak so off-handedly of its cure. But instead of rebuking Ella for presuming and for minimizing the crisis, Momma felt relieved and before long she was yawning nobly and confessing that she could not keep her eyes open. Ella went to her room with her and saw her bestowed, then kissed her good night and left her. Momma noted that her valise had been unpacked, her bed opened, her nightgown and slippers laid out, a water bottle set by the reading lamp on a little table by the bedhead, and a dozen little thoughtfulnesses executed in her behalf. When she was in her old nightgown, which was modeled on the potato-bag pattern, and had said her prayers, she crept into the disgracefully fine linen sheets and slept in luxurious oblivion for nine good hours. She did not know that Ella had sneaked into her own room, dressed swiftly, and stolen out to the opera, where she stood up, and that she went to a supper and there danced a while before she sneaked home. Momma had her breakfast in bed at Ella’s previous order and wandered about the house for hours before Ella had rung for her breakfast and sent for Momma. Ella was a sight. She looked like one of those immor’l French kings’ favorites. She had on a lace boudoir cap and a silk nightgown, very deckolett, and a “breakfast jacket” (of all things!) of satin and lace. She did look handsome. Momma had always hated to have even Poppa see her before breakfast. She began to be a little eager for her cure. “When do I go to see this Dr. Courtneidge?” Ella hesitated a moment, then spoke with a certain sternness: