Milly looked despairingly at Joan, but, try as she would, Joan could not answer that look with the reassuring smile that it was obviously asking for. She turned away and began straightening some music on the piano. "I must be off," said the doctor, shaking hands. "I shall come in from time to time, just to see that Miss Milly is obeying orders; oh, and I think cod liver oil would prove beneficial." "No; that I will not!" said Milly firmly. "Nonsense! You'll do as the doctor tells you," Mrs. Ogden retorted. "I will _not_ take cod liver oil; it makes me sick!" Joan left them arguing, and followed Doctor Thomas to the front door. "Look here," she said in a low voice, "surely you'll examine for tubercle?" He looked at her whimsically through his spectacles. "My dear young lady, you've been stuffing your head up with a lot of half-digested medical knowledge," and he patted her shoulder as though to soften his words. "Be assured," he told her, "that I shall do everything I think necessary for your sister, and nothing that I think unnecessary." 2 Joan went back to the drawing-room. The argument about the cod liver oil had ceased, and Milly was crying quietly, all by herself, in the window. She looked up with tearful eyes as her sister took her hand and pressed it. "Cheer up, old girl!" Joan whispered, her own heart heavy with forebodings. Mrs. Ogden said nothing; her face seemed expressionless when Joan glanced at her. Ethel's successor brought in the tea and Milly dried her eyes. It was a silent meal; from time to time Milly's gaze dwelt despairingly on her violin case where it lay on the sofa, and Joan knew that she was grieving as a lover for a lost beloved. "It's only for so short a time," she said, answering the unspoken thought. Milly shook her head and her eyes overflowed again, the tears dripped into the tea-cup that she held tremulously to her lips. Mrs. Ogden pretended not to notice. "More tea, Joan?" she inquired. Joan looked at her and hated her; and before the hate had time to root, began to love her again, for the weak thing that she was. There she sat, quiet and soft and utterly incapable. She was not facing this situation, not even trying to realize what it meant to her two daughters. "But I could crush her to pulp!" Joan thought angrily. "I could make her scream with pain if I chose, if I told her that I saw through her, despised her, hated her; if I told her that I was going to leave her and that she would never see me again. I could make her cry like Milly's crying, only worse; oh, how I could make her cry!" But her own thought hurt her somewhere very deep down, and at that moment Mrs. Ogden looked up and their eyes met. Joan stared at her coldly. "Milly is fretting," she said. Mrs. Ogden's glance wavered. "She mustn't do that, after what the doctor has told us. Milly, dearest, there's nothing to cry about." Milly hid her face. "It's all my life, Mother," she sobbed. "What is, my dear?" "My fiddle!"