figure rose and she recognised Mr. Gunner standing by a low camp bedstead. It’s Miss Henderson he said quietly. There was a murmur from the bed and Miriam bending over it saw Mrs. Bailey’s drawn face, fever-flushed, with bright wild eyes. “We think she ought to have a doctor,” murmured Mr. Gunner. “M’m” said Miriam absently. “Good of you,” murmured Mrs. Bailey thickly. Miriam sat down in the chair Mr. Gunner had left and felt for Mrs. Bailey’s hands. They were cold and trembling. She clasped them firmly and Mrs. Bailey sighed. “Perhaps you can persuade her,” murmured Mr. Gunner. “M’m” Miriam murmured. He crept away on tiptoe. Mrs. Bailey sighed more heavily. “Have you tried anything?” said Miriam dreamily, out into the crowded gloom. The room was full of unsightly necessaries, all old and in various stages of dilapidation, the overflow of the materials that maintained in the rest of the house the semblance of ordered boarding-house life. But there was something vital, even cheerful in the atmosphere; conquering the oppression of the crowded space. The aversion with which she had contemplated, at a distance, the final privacies of the Baileys behind the scenes, was exorcised. In the house itself there was no life; but there was brave life battling in this room. Mrs. Bailey would have admitted her at any time, with laughing apologies. Now that her entry had been innocently achieved, she found herself rejoicing in the disorder, sharing the sense Mrs. Bailey must have, every time she retired to this lively centre, of keeping her enterprise going for yet one more day. She saw that to Mrs. Bailey the house must appear as anything but a failure and the lack of boarders nothing but unaccountable bad luck. “A compress, or hot fomentations, hot fomentations could not do harm and they might be very good.” “Whatever you think my dear; good of you” murmured Mrs. Bailey feebly. “Not a bit” said Miriam looking about wondering how she should carry out, in her ignorance, this mysteriously suggested practical idea. There was a small fire in the little narrow fireplace, with a hob on either side. Standing up she caught sight of a circular willow pattern sink basin with a tap above it and a cupboard below set in an alcove behind a mound of odds and ends. The room was meant for a sort of kitchen or scullery; and it had been the doctors’ only sitting-room. How had the four big tall men, with their table and all their books, managed to crowd themselves in? In the dining-room Sissie responded with unconcealed astonishment and gratitude to Miriam’s suggestions and bustled off for the needed materials, lingering, when she brought them, to make useful suggestions, affectionately controlling Mrs. Bailey’s feeble efforts to help in the arrangements, and staying to supply Miriam’s needs, a little compact approving presence.