"Oh, Jane, Jane!" cried her mother, protestingly, "how can you act that way when there is so much to be done, and when your father is feeling so much worse than usual? Where were those pillows left, anyway? Come, come!" Jane rose to her knees and tried to wipe her face with the piece of wall-paper. Then her mother lifted her up and led her out through the hall. It was a chilly day in early November--a high wind lashing the gray and foaming lake--when David Marshall, wrapped in shawls and bolstered up with pillows, was driven carefully over the three miles of flinty macadam which led from his old house to his new one, and was put to bed again in a large, half-warmed apartment, fitted up scantily and provisionally with an old chamber-set that had escaped the auctioneer. His own illness and his daughter's marriage had almost brought the furnishing of the new house to a stand-still, while the anxiety of the purchasers of the old place to get their foundations in before the real cold weather had made it impossible for the family to re-remain a single day beyond the stipulated term. No new furnishings had been attempted beyond carpets and curtains, and for the first few days that the old man lay in these new quarters he had little to assure him that he was not in some hotel or in some hospital, save the echoing tread of the hard-finishers in other rooms about him. The first slight flurry of snow dusted the dead weeds of the open spaces round the house, and the reflections from it passed through the clear, broad panes of the windows to strike a grimmer chill from the shimmering surfaces of ash and oak. Never before had the world seemed to him so empty and so cold and so unsympathetic. And when his own wife had said to him, in accents almost of reproach, "Oh, David, David, how could you take such a time as this to be sick, with all the worry of moving and furnishing and Rosy's wedding and everything else?" he felt as bare and chill and numb as a naked sailor cast ashore on some alien and inhospitable coast. Susan Bates appeared at the new house almost immediately; she felt its need now, if ever, of being habitable. She stuffed her carriage with rugs and draperies; she sent an expressman out with her favorite easy-chair. She brought alcohol lamps and chafing-dishes. She seldom came without fruit or flowers. She set fire-screens and adjusted window-shades. She went deeply into the subject of opiates, and she talked by the hour with Jane and her mother about symptoms and remedies.