"Oh, mummy," said Mabel, "Jean is only home-sick." Jean wrote another desponding letter. "Home-sick or not home-sick, if Jean is ill, she has got to be nursed," said Mrs. Leighton. "Jean has never been ill in her life," Mabel pointed out. "She hasn’t even felt very home-sick. It will pass off, mummy dear." But it didn’t. Jean sat, in dismal solitude, in the room looking over to the girl with the pink bow, and she thought she should die. She did not like the words of encouragement which came from home. Every one was trying to "buck her up" as though she were a kid. No one seemed to understand that she was ill. At the fifth day of taking no food to speak of and not sleeping properly, and with the most lamentable distaste of everything and every one around possessing her, she detected at last an acute little pain which she thought must be appendicitis. She went out, wired home "I am in bed," and came back to get into it. Once the girls in the house heard that she was ill, they crowded into her room with the kindest expressions of help and sympathy. They brought her flowers and fruit, and one provided her with books. Then they came in, as Lance had promised, and made tea for her. Jean took the tea and a good many slices of bread and butter, and felt some of the weight lifted. It might not be appendicitis after all. And she never dreamed of the havoc which her telegram might create. Towards the evening, she got one of her effusive visitors to send off another telegram. "Feeling better," this one declared. She did not know that just before this point, Mr. Leighton had determined to fetch her home from London. The whole household was in despair. Mrs. Leighton wanted to start with him in the morning. Mr. Leighton was not only anxious, he was in a passion with himself for ever having let Jean go. "Madness," he said, "madness. I cannot stand this any longer." Isobel hated to see people display feeling, and this excitement about a girl with a headache annoyed her infinitely. She was invited out to dinner with Mabel, and Mabel would not go. "Papa is in such a state," Mabel said, "I could not possibly go out and leave him like this. Let us telephone that we cannot come." Isobel checked the protest that rose to her calm lips. She was ready in a filmy black chiffon gown, and her clear complexion looked startlingly radiant in that framing. She had quite determined to go to the dinner party. "Let me telephone for you, Mabel," she said with rather a nice concern in her voice. "Then it won’t take you away from your father." Mabel abstractedly thanked her. "Say Jean is ill please, and that papa is in fits about her. The Gardiners will understand." Isobel telephoned. She came back to Mabel with her skirts trailing in little flaunting waves of delicate black. "They beg me to come. It’s so disorganizing for a dinner party. What shall I do?" she asked in an interrogative manner.