Left alone, Esther with a resolutely cheerful air took down a blue bowl and proceeded to arrange therein the day’s floral offerings.  A sweet and crushed mixture they were, pansies, clove-pinks, mignonette, bleeding hearts, bachelors’ buttons, all short stemmed and minus any saving touch of green, but true love offerings for all that.  Wordless gifts most of them, prim little bunches, hot from tight clasping in chubby hands, shyly and swiftly deposited on “Teacher’s desk” when the back of that divinity was turned.  The blue bowl took kindly to them all, and as the girl’s clever fingers settled and arranged the glowing chaos it seemed that with their crushed fragrance something of the lost spirit of the room came back.  Just so had she arranged hundreds of times the sweet smelling miscellanies which had been her father’s constant tribute from grateful patients.

She had almost finished when the door opened to admit a little, grey wisp of a woman with a mild white face and large faded eyes which might once have been beautiful.  She was dressed entirely in lavender, a fondness for this colour being one of the many harmless fancies born of a brain not quite normal.  The rather expressionless face brightened at sight of the girl by the table.

“Why, Esther—­I didn’t hear you come in.  Have you put a mat under the bowl?  See now!  You have marked the table.”

Esther good humouredly reached for a table-mat, for the polish of this particular article of furniture was the pride of Aunt Amy’s life.  “It’s all right, Auntie.  It’s not really a mark.  Look, aren’t they sweet?  It is like one of father’s posies.  Is mother any better?”

“The children must think a lot of you, Esther!”

“Yes, although I think they would bring flowers to any one, bless ’em!  Is mother—­”

“Your mother hasn’t been down all day.  I went up with her dinner but she didn’t take any.  She wouldn’t answer.”

“Auntie, don’t you think she ought to do something about these headaches?”

“I don’t know, Esther.  She’ll be all right to-morrow.  She always is.”

“Yes.  But they are getting more frequent, and you know—­she is so different.  She can’t be well.  Haven’t you noticed it?”

“No,” vaguely.

“Well, Jane has.  So it can’t just be imagination.  She ought to consult a doctor.”

“She won’t.”

“But it’s absurd!  What shall we do if she goes on like this?  If there were only some one who would talk to her!  She won’t listen to me because she is older and married and—­all that.  All the same she doesn’t seem older when she acts like this—­like a child!”

“Well, you know, Esther, there isn’t any doctor here that your mother just fancies.”

The girl stooped lower over the blue bowl, perhaps to hide the little smile which crinkled up the corner of her mouth.  The faint colour on her cheek may have been a reflection from the flowers.