"That Miller girl needs a good rest," said Miss Jinny emphatically.  
She had come in from her visit to the Academy, where she had interviewed the model with a thoroughness that left little of her past unexplored, and her face was sad and thoughtful as she stood pulling off her gloves, finger by finger, by the big side window in the studio.
 
Mrs. Shelly went on with her knitting, but Patricia, who was mending a long rent in her best blouse, looked up with eager interest.
 
"Did you have a chance to talk to her much?" she asked, snapping off her thread in her absorption. "What is she really like? Does she remember Rockham? And does she know we have the old place?"
 
Miss Jinny chuckled and then grew grave and thoughtful.
 
"I guess she wouldn't last much longer at this business," she said, smoothing the creases out of the glove fingers. "She's got a pinched look and her cheeks are mighty pink. No, it ain't paint; I asked right out, and she answered just as nice as could be. She seems tired, poor girl, and mortally glad to have some one take an interest. She says the class rooms are so hot, and the change from living in eighty degrees to sixty-five, like it is in her room, has made her downright sick part of the time."
 
"It must be hard on her," acquiesced Patricia. "Why didn't she get something else to do?"
 
"Couldn't," said Miss Jinny, briefly. "A girl without friends or money hasn't much show in a big town. I'm going to take charge of that girl, Patricia."
 
Patricia felt a thrill of alarm.
 
"You aren't going to bring her here?" she queried, a faint flush of shame at the selfishness of her speech creeping into her cheeks.
 
"Certainly not," said Miss Jinny crisply. "I'm merely a guest here. I'm going to do something more practical, and I want you to help me, if you can stop being jealous of the poor girl, for——"
 
Patricia flung the sewing aside and threw her arms about her friend in a tempest of contrition. "I didn't mean to be horrid," she cried. "You know I wouldn't really be so selfish—if I thought you wanted it. But we have been so happy together here, and I wanted it to go onto the end, just like a beautiful story that ends happily. I'm sorry I seemed mean."
 
Miss Jinny gave her a pat and a kiss. "I guess I feel quite as much that way as you do, Miss Pat," she said with unusual softness. "I hadn't the wildest notion of bringing Mary Miller here. I'm going to take her to Rockham with me."
 
Patricia's heart sank, but she concealed her feelings sufficiently to reassure Miss Jinny, who went on briskly:
 
"I'm going to take her out with us day after tomorrow—she's not going back to the Academy—and I'm going to get work for her. There's where you can help. She's a good sewer, she says, though she'd rather live with someone and do housework."
 
"Shouldn't think she'd be strong enough for housework," said Patricia, puckering her brow. "Mrs. Hand wants a 'lady houseworker,' but I don't believe she'd have an ex-model. She's so awfully particular, you know."
 
Miss Jinny nodded. "She'd work her to death, anyway," she agreed. "She's mighty inhuman under her soft outside. Her help don't hear much of her purry ways, I can tell you. That's why they're always leaving. No, Mrs. Hand won't do." She sighed in perplexity. "I wish we were well enough off to keep her ourselves. I've taken a liking to her quiet ways, and I'd enjoy having her about, I'm sure. Most country girls are so loud and clumping that I've never wanted help before, but she's mighty different."
 
Patricia rubbed the end of her nose with the scissors. "There are the Haldens and the Berkleys and Tattans," she mused. "They're all supplied. Perhaps someone will leave and then she can get their place. Maybe Hannah Ann will have her help sometimes,—we can't afford to have anyone regularly, you know."
 
Miss Jinny rose abruptly, and putting away her things, began preparations for tea.
 
"Well, it's settled that she's going with us," she said comfortably. "I guess the future will take care of itself. If we do the best we can and leave the rest to the Lord, we can't go far astray. I feel that Mary Miller is going to be taken care of some way."
 
It had been raining all the afternoon, a gentle persistent rain that gave no sign of clearing, and they decided, after a cozy dinner at home, that their projected trip to Rockham the next day would have to be given up; but when Bruce pulled aside the curtain from the studio window to compare his watch with the illuminated disc of the St. Francis clock tower, he gave an exclamation of satisfaction.
 
"It's cleared off, after all," he said. "It's going to be a ripping fine day tomorrow."
 
They crowded to the big window, and saw, through the wet flicker of tiny sprouting leaves, a wind-swept sky with racing clouds and brilliant stars blazing in the dark, serene spaces between the hurrying masses of billowy vapor.
 
Judith clapped her hands. "We'll go, won't we, Bruce, and Elinor, and Miss Jinny?" she asked, whirling to each authority in turn. "We'll see dear, delectable Greycroft and have our picnic in the barn?"
 
"And the pup-pup-pergola, too," added Patricia mischievously.
 
Miss Jinny meditated for a moment. "I don't believe I'll go," she said. "I'm going back in another day or so, and mama and I will have enough of Rockham anyway. I'll stay with her and finish that library book that Mr. Spicer lent me. It's overdue now, anyway."
 
So it was arranged that the four of them, Elinor, Patricia, Judith, and Bruce, should take the early train to Rockham and spend the day in adjusting matters at Greycroft for their return the following Saturday, coming back to town in the late afternoon or early evening.
 
Just as they had finished, to their great satisfaction the studio knocker sounded the quick double knock that always heralded Griffin, and Judith flew to welcome her.
 
"I didn't ring," she explained, standing on the little blue rug by the umbrella stand, and jabbing her dripping umbrella into the stand. "The hall door was open and I came right in." She hesitated, and then rushed on, directing most of her speech to Elinor. "Geraldine Leighton is dying, they say, and I thought we might each send a little note to Doris—she's awfully alone, now that Mrs. Leighton is ill, you know. It mightn't help her much, but it would show her that we——"
 
"Dying!" cried Patricia, aghast. "Why they said she was better this morning."
 
Judith crept near to Mrs. Shelly and caught her hand close in both of hers. The others put eager questions. Griffin, who was deeply stirred, answered breathlessly. Suddenly, in the midst of the quiet, home-like, cozy evening, had come tragedy and the shadow of death.
 
Patricia had known Geraldine Leighton in a very slight and casual way, but with the word "dying," she became the heroic center of her hurrying thoughts. She saw her in the dim room with Doris and the nurse and doctor, each agonizingly intent on the slow, faltering heart-beats and the fitful, irregular breathing. As her swift mind galloped on to the end, and the subdued sounds of grief caught her inner ear, another face began to print itself rapidly on that quick-moving scene—Doris, white and haggard, looked into her eyes, and she felt her whole heart go out to her.
 
Griffin was just ending the sentence that had hurried the fleeting pictures through her mind when Patricia slipped away unnoticed into the hall, where she flung on a cape and soft hat of Judith's and softly let herself out.
 
The Leighton house was a big dark pile at the end of the street and the only light visible was in the back room where Patricia knew the struggle against death and disease was being fought out. She paused for a long look and then she ran lightly up the steps and put a shrinking finger on the bell.
 
It seemed an eternity till the door was grudgingly opened and a white-faced, gruff boy asked unrecognizingly what she wanted.
 
Patricia put her questions tremblingly, for she feared the stern, strange face of the boy in knickerbockers. She had seen him playing and shouting in the square on other days, and the change was so great that she felt death alone could have wrought it. But he answered evenly that 'Geraldine was just the same,' and was closing the door when Patricia stopped him. After a hasty parley, on his part, at first stubborn and then yielding, the door closed and Patricia, with beating heart, ran down the steps and hurried to the side of the house where the long windows of the drawing room protruded their iron balconies over the sidewalk.
 
Here she waited in the shadow of the fluttering violet arc light, with her eyes fastened to the silent, insensible windows. Ten minutes that seemed ten eternities went lagging by. Tears of disappointment rose to Patricia's eyes and she shivered as the gusts of west wind flung the drops from the saturated trees in a silver shower across the darkened panes.
 
"I'll count ten, and then I'll go," she said to herself.
 
The windows remained dark, and the only sounds on the quiet side street were the wind in the wet trees and the sizzle of the arc light above her head.
 
"Five, six, sev——"
 
She sprang forward as the second window slowly moved and a muffled figure stood on the balcony.
 
"Oh, Doris!" was all she found to say, as she stretched eager hands toward her.
 
Doris shrank back with a low, horrified cry.
 
"Don't come near me!" she warned in a stifled voice. "Go back as far as the tree. Don't you know it's scarlet fever? I'll go in at on............