Sylvia's sprain, as Austin had suspected, proved much more serious than she had admitted, but when the village doctor came about noon to dress her ankle, she insisted that she was none the worse for her long exposure, and that if she must lie still on a lounge for two weeks, the least the family could do would be to humor her in everything, and spend as much time as possible with her, or she would certainly die of boredom. She passed the entire day in making and unfolding plans, looking up the sailing dates of steamships, and writing letters of introduction for Austin. By night she had the satisfaction of knowing that Weston's offer for the south meadow had been accepted, that the Wallacetown Bank and the insurance money would furnish part of the needed funds, and that she was to be allowed to loan the rest, and that the little brick cottage belonged to her. The fact that Austin had had a long talk with his father and brother, and that his passage for Holland had been engaged by telegraph, seemed scarcely less of an achievement to her; but Mrs. Gray noticed, as she kissed her little benefactress after seeing her comfortably settled for the night, that her usually pale cheeks were very red and her eyes unnaturally bright, and worried over her all night long.

The next morning there could be no doubt of the fact that Sylvia was really ill, and two days later Dr. Wells shook his head with dissatisfaction after using his thermometer and stethoscope. He was a conscientious man who lacked self-confidence, and the look of things was disquieting to him.

"I think you ought to get a nurse," he said in the hall to Mrs. Gray as he went out, "and probably she would like to have her own doctor from the city in consultation, and some member of her family come to her. It looks to me very much as if we were in for bronchial pneumonia, and she's a delicate little thing at best."

Sylvia was laughing when Mrs. Gray, bent on being both firm and tactful, reentered her room. "Tell Dr. Wells he must make his stage-whispers softer if he doesn't want me to overhear him," she said, "and don't think of ordering the funeral flowers just yet. I'm not delicate—I'm strong as an ox—if I weren't I shouldn't be alive at all. Get a nurse by all means if it will make things easier for you—that's the only reason I need one. They're usually more bother than they're worth, but I know of two or three who might do fairly well, if any one of them is free. My doctor is an old fogey, and I won't have him around. As for family, I'm not as greatly blessed—numerically or otherwise—in that respect as the Grays, but my Uncle Mat would love to come, I feel sure, as he's rather hurt at my runaway conduct." She gave the necessary addresses, and still persisting that they were making a great fuss about nothing, turned over on her pillow in a violent fit of coughing.

Sylvia was right in one thing: she was much stronger than Dr. Wells guessed, and though the next week proved an anxious one for every member of the household except herself, it was not a dismal one. Even if she were flat on her back, her spirit and her vitality remained contagious. Thomas, whose state of mind was by this time quite apparent to the family, though he imagined it to be a well-concealed secret, hung about outside her door, positive that she was going to die, and brought offerings in the shape of flowers, early apples, and pet animals which he thought might distract her. Austin, who shared his room, insisted that he could not sleep because Thomas groaned and sighed so all night; Molly pertly asked him why he did not try rabbits, as kittens did not seem to appeal to Sylvia, and his mother bantered him half-seriously for thinking of "any one so far above him" whose heart, moreover, was buried "in the grave." Austin's somewhat expurgated version of Sylvia's story put an end to the latter part of the protest, but sent his hearers into a new ferment of excitement and sympathy. Sally, who was all ready to start for a "ball" in Wallacetown with Fred when she heard it, declared she couldn't go one step, it made her feel "that low in her spirits," and Fred replied, by gosh, he didn't blame her one mite; whereat they wandered off and spent the evening at a very comfortable distance from the house, but fairly close together, revelling in a wealth of gruesome facts and suppositions. Katherine said she certainly never would marry at all, men were such dreadful creatures, and Molly said, yes, indeed, but what else could a girl marry?—while Edith determined to devote the rest of her life to attending and adoring the lovely, sad, drooping widow, whose existence was to be one long poem of beautiful seclusion; and she was so pleased with her own ideas, and her manner of expressing them, that she wept scalding tears into the broth she was making for Sylvia as she stirred it over the stove.

The presence of "Uncle Mat," greatly dreaded beforehand, proved an unexpected source of solace and delight. He was a quiet, shrewd little man, not unlike Sylvia in many ways, but with a merry twinkle in his eye, and a brisk manner of speech which she did not possess. He sized up the Gray family quickly, and apparently with satisfaction, for he talked quite freely of his niece to them, and they saw that they were not alone in their estimate of her.

"It certainly was a great stroke of luck all round—for her as well as for you—when she blew in here," he said, "but if you knew what an awful hole we think she's left behind her in New York you'd think yourselves doubly lucky to have her all to yourselves. There's more than one young man, I can tell you"—with a sly look at Thomas—"watching out for her return. You should have seen her at a party I gave for her three years ago or more, dressed in a pink frock looped up with roses, and with cheeks to match! She wasn't always this pale little shadow, I can tell you. Well, the boys were around her that night like bees round a honeysuckle bush—no denying there's something almighty irresistible about these little, soft-looking girls, now, is there? Ah! her roses didn't last long, poor child. Now you've given her a good, healthful place to live in, and something to think about and do—she'd have lost her reason without them, after all she's been through. But when you're tired of her, I want her. I'm a poor, forlorn lonely old bachelor, and I need her a great deal more than any of you. What do you say to a little walk, Mr. Gray, before we turn in? I want to have a look at your fine farm. I have a farm myself—no such grand old place as this, of course, but a neat little toy not far from the city, where I can run down Sundays. Sylvia used to be very fond of going down with me. It's from my foreman, a queer, scientific chap—Jenkins his name is—that she's picked up all these notions she's been unloading on you. Pretty good, most of them, aren't they, though? You must run down there some time, boys, and look things over—it's well to go about a bit when one's thinking of building and branching out—Sylvia's idea, exactly, isn't it?"

Mr. Gray and Thomas did "run down," seizing the opportunity while Austin was still at home, and while there was practically no farm-work to be done. Jenkins did the honors of Mr. Stevens's little place handsomely, and they returned with magnificent plans, from the erection of silos and the laying of concrete floors to the proper feeding of poultry. When "Uncle Mat" was obliged to return to his business, after staying over two weeks with the Grays, Austin went with him, for he suggested that he would be glad to have the boy as his guest in New York for a few days before he sailed.

"You better have a glimpse of the 'neat little toy,' too," he said, "and perhaps see something of a rather neat little city, too! You'll want to do a little shopping and so on, and I might be of assistance in that way."

"I don't see how you can go," said Thomas to Austin the night before he left, as they were undressing, "while Sylvia is still in bed, and won't be around for another week at least. She's responsible for all your tremendous good fortune, and you'll leave without even saying thank you and good-bye. You're a darned queer ungrateful cuss, and always were."

"I know it," said Austin, "and such being the 'nature of the beast,' don't bother trying to make me over. You can be grateful and devoted enough for both of us. Now, do shut up and let me go to sleep—I sure will be thankful to get a room to myself, if I'm not for anything else."

"I don't see how any one can help being crazy over her," continued Thomas, thumping his pillow as if he would like to pummel any one who disagreed with him.

"Don't you?" asked Austin.

The next night he was in New York with Mr. Stevens, trying hard to feel natural in a tiny flat which was only one of fifty in the same great house. A colored butler served an elaborate dinner at eight o'clock in the evening, and brought black coffee, liqueurs, and cigars into the living-room afterwards, and, worst of all, unpacked all his scanty belongings and laid them about his room. Austin really suffered, and the cold perspiration ran down his back, but he watched his host carefully and waited from one moment to another to see what would be expected of him next; he managed, too, before he went to bed, to ask a question which had been on his mind for some time.

"Would you mind telling me, sir, where Sylvia's mother is?"

Uncle Mat shot one of his keen little glances in Austin's direction. "Why, no, not at all, as nearly as I can," he said. "My brother, Austin, made a most unfortunate match; his wife was a mean, mercenary, greedy woman, as hard as nails, and as tough as leather—but handsome, oh, very handsome, as a girl, and clever, I assure you. I have often been almost glad that my brother did not live long enough to see her in her real colors. She married, very soon after Sylvia herself, a worthless Englishman—discharged from the army, I believe, who had probably been her lover for some time. Cary gave her a check for a hundred thousand to get rid of her the day after his wedding to Sylvia, and the pair are probably living in great comfort on that at some second-rate French resort."

"Thank you for telling me; but it's rather awful, isn't it, that any one should have to think of her mother as Sylvia must? Why, my mother—" He stopped, flushing as he thought of how commonplace, how homely and ordinary, his mother had often seemed to him, how he had brooded over his father's "unfortunate match." "My mother has worked her fingers to the bone for all of us, and I believe she'd let herself be chopped in pieces to help us gladly any day."

"Yes," assented Mr. Stevens, "I know she would. There are—several different kinds of mothers in the world. It's a thousand pities Sylvia did not have a fair show at a job of that sort. She would have been one of the successful kind, I fancy."

"It would seem so," said Austin.