“I was a coward to-day,” she cried.  “Such an awful coward!  I had no business to leave when Dr. Grant told me to.  I should have stayed and helped.  But when he spoke of diphtheria I couldn’t help it and thought of my little chaps.  I have already seen that dreadful thing come and sweep little lives away, just in a day or two.  It took the one we buried on the other side of the cove, and we saw it suffocating, helpless to aid.  And that’s why I ran out, terror-stricken.  But I hear that you held the baby for him.  You don’t know what it is to have babies of your own, and were not afraid.  It is dreadful, you know, that fear that comes in a mother’s heart!”

She looked quite weak when she sat down, in a poor, worn, upholstered chair that was among the things they brought from England, and I sat on the arm of it, beside her.

“I have changed all my clothes,” I told her, “and I don’t think I’m dangerous.  Now Daddy insists that we must leave to-morrow, and I’m just broken-hearted about it.  Dr. Grant wrote him that it would be better for us to leave, but I don’t want to go.”

“Did the doctor write that?” she exclaimed.

“Yes, because there might be danger in my staying longer.  Why can’t I share it with all the others who will have to stay here?  I shall never forgive him!”

I suppose that we were both rather excited, and I know I had to dab my eyes with my handkerchief.  Then Mrs. Barnett forgot all about her own worries, for she was patting me on the arm, looking at me intently all the time, just as Daddy has been doing, in a queer way that I can’t understand.

“I daresay it will be best for both of you,” she said, in that sweetest voice of hers.

“Yes, I think Daddy wants to get back,” I said, and she stared at me again, as I rose and bade her good-by.

“Don’t say it yet, dear,” she told me, “I will certainly come down to see you off in the morning.  It has been so delightful to have had you here all these weeks, and I shall miss you dreadfully when you are gone.  I can hardly bear to think of it.”

So I kissed her and had to tear myself away.  Like a pair of silly women we were on the verge of tears once more, and there was nothing left for me to do but to run.

It was perhaps some unusual effect of the night air, but I was quite husky when I spoke to Daddy again.

“You will be glad to get back, won’t you.  Daddy?” I asked him.  “It will be so nice for you to go to the club again, and see all your old friends.”

He looked at me, and only nodded in a noncommittal way.

“I will leave you now,” I said.  “There is a lot of packing to do, and that poor silly Susie is perfectly useless, since she heard we were going.  She is sitting on a stool in the kitchen and weeping herself into a fit.  Her nose is the reddest thing you ever saw.  But you and I are old travelers, aren’t we, and used to quick changes?  You remember, in Europe, how we used to get to little towns and decide in a moment whether we would stay or not, when we were tired of all those old museums and cathedrals?”