"
"Do not try to any longer, mother, for you never will."
"Won't you go down to dinner?"
"No."
"Why not?"
"I don't wish to, for one thing; and I'm too ill, for another.
Send me up something, if it's not too much trouble."
"I'm going to have a doctor see you this very afternoon," said Mrs.
Mayhew, emphatically, as she left the room.
To do her justice she did send up a very nice dinner to Ida before
eating her own. As far as doctors and dinners were concerned, she
could do her whole duty in an emergency.
"Isn't Ida coming down?" whispered Stanton to his aunt.
"No. I can't make her out at all, and she looks dreadfully. You
must go for a doctor, right after dinner."
Van Berg could not hear their words, but their ominous looks added
greatly to his disquietude. He had been too ill at ease to seek
even Miss Burton's society during the morning, and had spent the
time in making a sketch of Ida as she stood in the doorway before
entering the parlor the previous evening.
But Jennie Burton did not seem to feel or resent his neglect in
the slightest degree. Indeed, her thoughts, like his own, were
apparently engrossed with the one whose chair had been vacant so
often of late, and who, when present, seemed so unlike her former
self.
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