dith.

ES, it is more than a year, doctor, since my health failed," sighed Mrs. Mere"And what alarms me the most is that I haven't an ache nor a pain, just this dreadful lassitude. And I am so weak, almost helplessly weak."

"Hum!" growled old Dr. Barker, looking keenly past his his patient, propped on her lace-trimmed pillows, to the nurse who stood on the other side of the bed, touching her patient's hand with soft, feline strokes. "Miss-er-Morton, thank you-my medicine case, please. Think I left it in the coupe. If you will kindly inquire?" That young woman whisked her crisp blue skirts and coquettish cap rather unwillingly away on the errand she evidently saw to be futile, and a polite dismissal. The physician turned abruptly to Mrs. Meredith and demanded: "What on earth has happened to you, Margaret? When I went abroad eight years ago you were like a rose, a great, strong American Beauty, full of health and womanhood. Why, you rode any horse and danced all night or romped all day with that fine young daughter of yours! I used to think you enjoyed life in all its fullness. Now I find you a chronic invalid, petted by a professional nurse." He broke off indignantly, his patient's meek assent to the latter statement seeming to exasperate her old friend and physician still more.

Presently he asked, more gently: "Don't you get up all day?"

an

"Not every day, doctor," swered Mrs. Meredith. "You see, the nurse thinks perfect rest is my only hope. Oh, she's positively de

voted to me." "Or to her thirty dollars a week," interjected the doctor. Mrs. Meredith flushed a little, and continued: "She gives me massage every day, and alcohol baths—and treats my hair beautifully. And she keeps all the housekeeping worries away from me-and doesn't let John see me when he's cross-or has unpleasant things to say to me."

"Hum!" commented the doctor. "Rather hard on John Meredith, this sort of thing, isn't it? 'By the way, where's Emily? She's quite a young lady now, I suppose. Let me think; she was seven the Christmas before I left, and I took her to the 'Cinderella' matinee, I remember."

"Yes," sighed the lady, "she's a great, strapping, awkward girl of fifteen, tall as her father, and such chums as they were!"

"Were," echoed her listener, a note of apprehension in his voice, and bending nearer to Mrs. Meredith, who hesitated perceptibly, and straightened her fluffy, lacy ruffles on a bewitching neglige jacket with trembling fingers before replying.

"Well, doctor," said she, "I simply couldn't stand Emily's boisterous ways and spirits. She got on my nerves so that I could not endure to have her come bouncing into the room, jarring everything in it and looking so big and red, positively like a country milkmaid, doctor."

"Thank Heaven for that at least," responded that gentleman fervently. "And so and so-well," continued the lady appealingly, "I sent her to Madame Bellair's school, and Madame says that in two or three months she can teach her to enter

a room quietly, and-and tone her down a little. You can't imagine, doctor, what a relief it is to have the house quiet again." The patient grew confidential after breaking the ice thus far, and went rapidly on. "Why, she actually whistled, doctor, and slid down the banisters, and had an immense Great Dane dog thumping after her everywhere. And me with my nerves so shattered!"

"Her father must miss her," was Dr. Barker's rejoinder. "Did he object to her being sent away?"

"Oh, yes, he simply stormed, and at me, too," complained the invalid, wearily. "Said I was selfish-and heartless, and worried me into such a state that it took the nurse two days to compose my nerves again. John declared, besides, that I ought to send Miss Morton packing, and have Emily look after me, if I really needed any one. And Emily's so unsympathetic-just like her father. She actually told him she believed. there was nothing the matter with me at all." Here Mrs. Meredith extracted a filmy handkerchief from her ruffles and pathetically dabbed her eyes.

"Hum, hum!" said the doctor, and his own handkerchief was actually needed to stifle his cough-or was it an angry snort of impatience? For, as one of the "old school" of physicians, the good man had piloted Margaret through childhood's troubled seas of mumps and measles, and had convoyed little Emily's voyage safely until his retirement to a professorship abroad. To return and find Mrs. Meredith a nervous wreck, Emily banished, and his friend John a cipher in his own house, seemed to Dr. Barker a direct interference of .some malevolent Fate yet to be reckoned with. Meanwhile, revolutionize this sad state of affairs in the Meredith family was the physician's intent and hope, his oldtime, fatherly smile returning, Margaret thought, as he said dryly,

to

the

The doctor, his fingers on patient's white wrist, inquired: "Who has charge of your case?" Miss Morton answered: "Dr. Everson, sir, the head of the Women's Hospital."

"Oh, so you have been there, I suppose?" Mrs. Meredith nodded and the doctor stifled another cough with an irate "Some fool operation, probably? They are so fashionable, I hear now, among the smart set. Yes? Ah, just so

He rose, drew on his gloves and regarding the invalid quizzically, he demanded: "Will you take me back as your medical adviser, Margaret ?" She responded heartily: "Yes, indeed," but the nurse's velvet voice suggested sweetly: "And Dr. Everson?" Dr. Barker laughed, though nettled at the remark evidently. "He must have his hands full with operations, doubtless. However, I'll see him. He's an old friend, too," and bowed himself out.

The doctor found John Meredith pacing the library below with long, restless strides and haggard face, and gripped his hand cheerily, saying: "Courage, man; your wife's only perishing of inanition; lack of fresh air, sunshine and occupation. Leave her to me. You shall have her back again, the rosy, happy, healthy woman she used to to be; ought to be this minute if her mind. hadn't been filled full with such folderol as operations and nurses."

persistency. When the door closed on this damsel, the physician exploded at once. "John, we've got to get rid of that confounded nurse or Margaret will never get well." The husband looked annoyed. He had grown accustomed to the invalid in her pretty negligees, and Miss Morton looked after her well. He dreaded a fresh upheaval in that fated household. Endless complications seemed to threaten him, and he needed peace and quiet of all things just now, when the stock market had been jumping for days and some investments were giving him much uneasiness. "What else is your trouble, Meredith?" said his observant friend. "This stock flurry. bothering you?" "A little," John owned reluctantly; "I've got more Consolidated Copper than I care to cover if it keeps on dropping. But about Margaret? I thought this Miss Morton was satisfactory. Did you want to recommend some one else?"

"No, sir," emphatically declared the physician. "The woman would soon be well if we could get her away from that soft-voiced, catty professional. Nurses are for downright sickness, typhoid, diphtheria, and so on. I'd like to see this one in charge of a small-pox or any other dangerous case, not keeping Margaret in bed, practically helpless, and drawing thirty dollars a week for brushing Mrs. Meredith's hair and filling her bath. What has become of Black Chloe you had when Emily was a baby?"

"She retired when Mrs. Meredith thought a trained nurse was absolutely required," said Meredith. "We could get her again-that is, if you are sure, Barker, that there is nothing serious really demanding skilled nursing?"

a

He was interrupted by Dr. Barker jumping from his chair with mighty "I have it, John Meredith! All Margaret needs to rouse her from this hypochondric state is a

sharp shock. She is not ill, but imagines herself to be so, aided and abetted by a shrewd woman who likes an easy place. If you were a poor man and she positively had to cook your dinners, to do some real work, and take some real interest in life, she'd have no time for this tom-foolery of 'nervous prostration,' I'll swear."

John smiled rather drearily at this outburst. "And if I agree with you, doctor, what then? I'll be a poor man all right if this Con. Copper tumbles much lower. Thirty-eight now, and I went in at fifty-four.'

"That's it," shouted Barker excitedly. "A drop in mining shares! Tell her you're involved; have lost deeply, terribly; have got to give up the house-hear me through now,' as Meredith put up an emphatic hand of protest. "Tell her you've nothing left but did you sell that little place of yours in the mountains Lake Tahoe way?"

"No," admitted Meredith reluctantly, "there's a bungalow on Fallen Leaf Lake. Oh, a mere shooting box, not fit for a sick woman's menage though-quite impossible every way, doctor."

"The very thing!" declared that gentleman exultantly. "I give you my word, John Meredith, if you can get her up there in the mountain air and sunshine, with old Chloe and Emily she'll get well. You, too, man, should go; you're in ten times more danger of nervous prostration John, than Mrs. Margaret is. Take her there, where you met and courted her, too, wasn't it, and in two months she'll forget these imaginary ailments and ride and row and tramp as she did at twenty. I'll wager all I'm worth on it, too."

Meredith sat silent and lost in thought, in memories of those dear days when Margaret, a slim, rosy girl in short skirts and high boots, measured off the mountain trails as merrily as he did, and what a jolly chum she was! It was July in San

Francisco, foggy and gray and cold outside, the office oppressive with steam heat, and the reek of crude oil from an adjacent smoke stack. The telephone jangled its spiteful call in the outer room, and the office boy begged pardon presently to say that Messrs. Halliday wished to see Mr. Meredith before noon.

"Those confounded brokers," groaned John, and closed his eyes. despairingly. As he did so, another word painted itself before his mental vision-a world of golden sunshine distilling spicy fragrance from great pines overshadowing emerald shallows and sapphire-blue depths of that mountain lake lying under Mount Tallac's snow-clad shoulder.

The doctor waited patiently. "Oh, impossible," declared Meredith presently, his tired eyes seeking the sullen sky and smoky harbor outside. with visible disgust. "My business, my investments-nonsense, doctor, the thing can't be done!"

"Just so," assented the other man, lighting a cigar. "Your wife's health, your own, are nothing then? John, you look ten years older than your forty summers, with those lines of worry, and that fast-thinning crop of gray hair. And Emily? Is she boxed up in a close schoolroom or stuffy dormitory these July days?"

John Meredith turned a dreary smile toward him. "Poor child; her mother loves her, I'm sure, but between 'nerves' and that nurse's harping on quiet, perfect quiet--" heavy sigh told the rest.

A

"Now, friend," spoke the doctor, seriously, "we have gripped hands. often enough to have you know I'm in earnest about this. Mrs. Meredith will be a hopeless valetudinarian the rest of her days if she be not roused from her present apathy. While you live in the city and in the style she is accustomed to she simply will not change her mode of existence. Let me manage this affair. Only assent to my plans

and help to carry them out."

Reluctantly, on Meredith's part, their compact was made, and the continued panic, almost, in Con. Copper absorbed him so that he was totally unprepared next day for a telephone message urging him to come home immediately, as Mrs. Meredith hoped he would see her as soon as possible.

A second summons from "central" gave him in Dr. Baker's well-known growl: "That you, Meredith? Well, I've broken the ice for you. Water cold, but bracing already." "But what, how-where do I come in, doctor?" queried the bewildered listener. "I'll be there to explain in twenty minutes; good-bye," sponded the arch plotter, and explain he did during John's muchperturbed journey homeward in the doctor's coupe.

re

That gentleman had commented to Mrs. Meredith during his morning visit on the disturbed state of the stock market, intimating that her husband was much worried, and tnat a crash was inevitable. "I left her walking the floor and only anxious to comfort you for your losses," finished the doctor, coolly. "But I've concluded to hold on a while," interrupted Meredith. "I hear on the inside that this is only a freezeout for tenderfeet."

"You, sir, have sold out," unblushingly declared Barker. “Oh, yes, and to me-tut, tut, man, all's fair in love and war-and this is war, surely. I am stock expert enough to keep tab on Con. Copper's pulse awhile," and a few minutes later. the doctor's leather case held a duly signed transfer of "value enough to determine this case," chuckled the schemer gaily.

"Now, tell your wife you have sold; that you will have to withdraw from active business for awhile; that the house and the carriage must be given up." "It will k her outright," interjected John

here.

"Nonsense! Tell her," inexorably continued his companion, "that your only refuge for a time is that mountain bungalow. I, myself, shall tell her another truth, namely, that you need recuperation before resuming your work. Allen can go on in the office all right-nonsense, he'd have to if you break down, eh?"

Just then the carriage drew up at John's door, and with a comforting hand-clasp the doctor fired the last shot. "Get old Chloe back; get Emily and enlighten her, and above all go away to the mountains next week or sooner."

Very dolefully and apprehensively Meredith entered his house to be greeted by a veritable whirlwind of pink ruffles, tears and kisses as his wife threw herself (rather vigorously for a sick woman) into his ready arms. He was spared much evasion, for Mrs. Meredith had assumed at once that he was ruined. "I knew it from the look in Dr. Barker's eyes," she sobbed. "And oh, John, to think you have to begin life all over again and hampered by a nervous invalid, too! If I could only die and leave you and Emily free-you would both be so much better off without a helpless, useless wreck wreck such as I may be all my life!"

To quiet and comfort her, to assure her that she was the most essential, the only necessary part of his existence, her husband found pleasant enough, and it was sweet, indeed, to have her cling to him in the old-time, dependent way.

But

the days that followed were soultrying, certainly, and John often feared he must confess, and break down the unaccustomed, nay, the intolerable wall of subterfuge between them. Dr. Barker was his staunch and steadfast ally. He bullied the nurse till she actually fled, wrathfully declaring, however, that if Mrs. Meredith were taken into the "back-woods" without the trained nursing she was accustomed to-well, Dr. Barker might call in

the gentleman who usually carried home his work to return the poor lady to civilization. At which hackneyed reference to the undertaker the doctor chuckled more than ever, serene over having won his point.

Then he coaxed the invalid to rise and dress every morning, and buoyed her up till she actually supervised the packing of her household goods-from a reclining chair, it is true, but "clothed and in her right mind," as the old doctor gleefully observed when the movers were careless with cherished mahogany. If she wept tears bitter and plentiful on John's guilty shoulder as they drove away from the home she was abandoning (ostensibly) forever her husband's tenderness soon banished that grief. Every hour of the journey assured Meredith that the doctor's plan was happily inaugurated, as he noticed how well his wife endured the unusual fatigue, and how she forebore to complain of the noise and heat of the train. And with renewed hope he watched her keen interest in lovely Lake Tahoe, that gem of the high Sierras, brimming its deep crater-cup those summer days with the melting snows of grand peaks. A day here to rest while Chloe and and Emily, Emily, both wreathed in smiles and delight, went on to have the lake cottage in perfect readiness, and behold, a new woman, albeit a trifle pale and tired who slipped from Meredith's arms into the bungalow's long porchchair with a sigh of delight, too, next evening.

For a veritable "sunset land" was round them; the west a glory of rose and amber, with dark pines and distant peaks transfigured by a flood of molten gold. Below their veranda Fallen Leaf Lake seemed showered with pink rose-petals, each tiny wave a curled and ruffled leaf swung by the dying breeze.

"Oh, I shall get well here, I know," said Margaret cheerfully, as they stood later on to watch the