Maris by Grace Livingston Hill Page B

her face.
    "You all right, Maris?" he asked with an unwonted tenderness in his tone.
    "All right, brother!"
    "Where's Gwyn? I can't find her anywhere."
    "I let her go over to Erminie's to stay a few days. You know, they won't let her come back to school if she stays here, even though she has had the measles. Don't you think that was all right? She oughtn't to stay out of school. She'll only be worrying if she stays here."
    "Sure that was all right. But what about the boys? They'll get it, I suppose."
    "Maybe not. Lane Maitland has taken them over to his home to stay awhile. They're charmed. You're to take over a bag of some things for them. I was going to suggest that you stay there, too, but I guess maybe we might need you here if anything happens in the night. Father isn't so well. The nurse said he was having a nervous chill."
    "Say, that's awful!" said Merrick. "No, I'll stay here. Maybe I'd better go look at Dad. Where is he?"
    "Close by Mother. The nurse said he won't leave her."
    They went softly to the door and looked in. It was very quiet in the shadowed room. The nurse was running the water in the bathroom. Their mother lay as quiet as she had been all day, and sometimes it seemed as if she were scarcely breathing. Her eyes were closed. The children's hearts contracted, and Maris could hardly keep from crying out in her agony as she recalled her brother's words that morning: "That doggone fool wedding is at the bottom of it all." Was she the cause of her mother's sudden illness? Oh, she was, she knew she must be! Could she ever, ever forgive herself? If Mother should die, how could they ever go on living?
    Merrick went softly over by his father and laid his hand on his head, startled to feel it was hot and feverish. His father looked up and tried to smile sadly.
    Merrick stooped and whispered in his ear, "It's all right, Dad. Mr. Matthews says he'll extend the note. You needn't worry!"
    A look of relief passed over the drawn, worn features of the father, and he drew a deep breath of a sigh.
    Merrick slipped out softly and came back presently with a folding cot, and then again with a soft mattress.
    The nurse came in with sheets and pillows.
    "Now, Mr. Mayberry, you're going to lie down on this cot, close to your wife, and then you'll be able to hear her if she stirs and wants anything," she whispered to him.
    Maris saw Merrick bring their father's bathrobe and help him off with his coat and then make him lie down, with another great sigh of relief. Then she hurried back to her own patient. Poor Father! He had been worrying about something. A note that had to be extended? What was that? Had Father been so hard put to it that he had had to borrow money to pay for her wedding? Oh, how had she been so blind? And she had been so thrilled and involved in all the intriguing activities that Tilford had produced from day to day that she had not noticed! Was it possible that God had to send all these startling anxieties to bring her to her senses?
    It was not yet time for Lexie's medicine. She seemed to be still sleeping. Maris dropped down on her bed for a moment and let these enlightening facts roll over her tired soul in a great condemning flood.
    Then she began to go back and think it out. What a dear family she had always had! How they had always done everything together, and enjoyed it. Even being poor together! There was the year when Father had thought that he was going to lose the house because he had had to let the interest on the mortgage lapse. How desperately they had all saved and planned and tried to make a bit of money here and there to help. Even the children. She recalled Gwyneth at five years going into the woods with some children and bringing home quantities of spring beauties, which she had tied in funny little bunches and taken out on the street and actually sold, for a penny a bunch! She could see their father's face now when she had brought her entire fortune of eleven cents to him radiantly and told