those who drank deep of it.  Therefore no one was to blame, and no one need be bitter.  But these were the philosophers of the colony:  a select and dainty few in any colony.  But there were several rebels amongst the invalids, and they found consolation in confiding to each other their separate grievances.  They generally held their conferences in the rooms known as the newspaper-rooms, where they were not likely to be interrupted by any caretakers who might have stayed at home because, they were tired out.

To-day there were only a few rebels gathered together, but they were more than usually excited, because the Doctors had told several of them that their respective caretakers must be sent home.

“What must I do?” said little Mdlle.  Gerardy, wringing her hands.  “The Doctor says that I must tell my sister to go home:  that she only worries me, and makes me worse.  He calls her a ‘whirlwind.’  If I won’t tell her, then he will tell her, and we shall have some more scenes.  Mon Dieu! and I am so tired of them.  They terrify me.  I would suffer anything rather than have a fresh scene.  And I can’t get her to do anything for, me.  She has no time for, me.  And, yet she thinks she takes the greatest possible care of me, and devotes the whole day to me.  Why, sometimes I never see her for hours together.”

“Well, at least she does not quarrel with every one, as my mother does,” said a Polish gentleman, M. Lichinsky.  “Nearly every day she has a quarrel with some one or other; and then she comes to me and says she has been insulted.  And others come to me mad with rage, and complain that they have been insulted by her.  As though I were to blame!  I tell them that now.  I tell them that my mother’s quarrels are not my quarrels.  But one longs for peace.  And the Doctor says I must have it, and that my mother must go home at once.  If I tell her that, she will have a tremendous quarrel with the Doctor.  As it is, he will scarcely speak to her.  So you see, Mademoiselle Gerardy, that I, too, am in a bad plight.  What am I to do?”

Then a young American spoke.  He had been getting gradually worse since he came to Petershof, but his brother, a bright sturdy young fellow, seemed quite unconscious of the seriousness of his condition.

“And what am I to do?” he asked pathetically.  “My brother does not even think I am ill.  He says I am to rouse myself and come skating and tobogganing with him.  Then I tell him that the Doctor says I must lie quietly in the sun.  I have no one to take care of me, so I try to take a little care of myself, and then I am laughed at.  It is bad enough to be ill; but it is worse when those who might help you a little, won’t even believe in your illness.  I wrote home once and told them; but they go by what he says; and they, too, tell me to rouse myself.”

His cheeks were sunken, his eyes were leaden.  There was no power in his voice, no vigour in his frame.  He was just slipping quickly down the hill for want of proper care and understanding.