beware of imitations" tone; "he is not quite satisfied with the effect of the last, I think; it has not brought up the pulse and quickened the appetite in the way he hoped. I thought that he might run up and look at Amelia at the end of his visit to me."

"And is it possible," inquires Jim, with some heat, "that you are going to let half a day go by without doing anything for her? I suppose you have not exaggerated, have you?" turning with an earnest appeal in his eyes to Cecilia; "but in any case I am very sure that nothing short of being really and gravely ill would have kept her in bed—she who is always waiting hand and foot upon us all, whom we all allow to spend her life in hewing wood and drawing water for us."

"Send for Dr. Coldstream at once," says Mr. Wilson irritably; "at once, I tell you; he is so very seldom out of the house that I have often thought of suggesting to him to take a room here; and now, on the only occasion on which he is really needed, he is not at hand."

"If you will write the note," says Jim, a shade relieved at having at last succeeded in rousing Amelia's relations to prompt action, and feeling a feverish desire to be doing something, "I will take it at once; it will be the quickest way; I may catch him before he goes out and bring him back with me."

"Do you really think it is necessary?" asks Sybilla, as Jim hustles Cecilia to her writing-table, and stands, nervously fidgeting beside her as she writes; "do you think, if it is only a common cold, as I suspect, that it is quite fair to worry a man who is so run off his legs already? He will probably laugh in your face; still, if you are so set upon it, it is perhaps more satisfactory."

"You need not go into details—just a line—make haste!" cries Jim, hanging tiresomely over Cecilia, rather impeding her than the reverse by his impatience, and leaving entirely unnoticed Sybilla's observation, which indeed has been uttered more to preserve her own self-respect than with much hope that in the present wrong-headed state of mind of her family any member will pay much heed to it.

In five minutes more, Jim, with Cecilia's note in his pocket, is being borne rapidly in