Lee looked dismayed.

“I’m mighty sorry, Andy,” he said, remorsefully.

“Don’t feel too badly,” was his friend’s reply.  “After a winter with us Evelyn will be another girl.”

“What?” Lee started in his chair.  “Andy, what are you thinking about?”

“Just what I say.  Charlotte and I have talked it all over.  We’ve both taken an immense liking to Evelyn and we’d honestly enjoy having her here for the winter.  It only remains for you to convince Evelyn herself that we are to be trusted, and to secure her promise that we may have our way with her from first to last, and the thing is done.”

“You are sure that’s really all there is to it?  You’re not keeping anything from me?”

“Not a thing.  And I’m as sure as a man can well be.  That’s why I don’t prescribe a sanatorium for her, or anything of that sort.  All she needs is a rational, every-day life of the health-making kind, such as Charlotte and I can teach her—­Charlotte even more effectively than I. Evelyn needs simply to build up a strong physical body; then these troublesome nerves will take care of themselves.  Believe me, Thorne, it’s refreshingly simple.  I’ve not even a drug to suggest for your sister.  She doesn’t need any.”

“But, Andy, it doesn’t seem to me I can let Evelyn stay here with you all winter—­the first winter of your married life.  You two ought to be alone together.”

“No.  Charlotte and I haven’t set out to go through life—­even this first year of it—­alone together.  We are together, no matter how many we have about us.  It will be only in the day’s work if we keep Evelyn with us, and it’s a sort of work that will pay pretty well, I fancy.”

“It certainly will—­in more than one kind of coin,” and Lee gripped his friend’s hand.

So it was settled.  Evelyn agreed so joyously to the plan that her brother’s last doubt of its feasibility was removed, and he went away a day later with a heart so much lighter than the one he had brought with him that it showed in his whole bearing.

“God bless you and your sweet wife, Andy Churchill,” he wrote back from his first stopping-place, and when Churchill showed the letter to Charlotte she said, happily: 

“We’ll make the copper motto come true with this guest, won’t we?  Evelyn will be a very pretty girl when she loses that fragile look.  Her eyes and expression are beautiful.  Do you know, she accepts everything I say as if I were the Goddess of Wisdom herself.”

“Charlotte,” said Mrs. Peyton, a few days later, coming hurriedly into Charlotte’s own room, where that young woman was busy with various housewifely offices, “I’ve had a telegram.  I’m so upset I don’t know what to do.  My sister is sick and her husband is away, and she’s sent for me.  I’m not able to do nursing—­I’m not strong enough—­but I don’t see but that I must go.”

“I’m very sorry your sister is ill,” said Charlotte.  “Tell me about her.”