"I suppose I might. Oh, well, we had a lovely time. Rogie was as good as gold. How did you like it? Is there anything in it?"
"Not for me," Anne said wearily.
"I thought as much. Still, I wish I could believe it. I'd like to get rid of that sciatica and no liniment touches it."
"But if you are a scientist, momsy, you don't have sciatica; and if you have sciatica you're not a scientist. So they get you coming and going."
"I suppose they do," Hilda agreed placidly. "Besides, I haven't tried that salt and bacon grease the delicatessen woman told me of. I'll do that to-night."
But the sciatica was miraculously cured without the bacon grease or Science. It disappeared that very evening with a cablegram from Belle. She sent a hundred dollars and said she was starting for home. At intervals all evening Hilda read the message. By nine o'clock the hundred dollars had been stretched to include a dozen things.
"And a wheel-chair for papa," she concluded.
"Not if you buy those other things," Anne warned, struggling to keep Hilda's imagination within some kind of bounds.
"Are chairs very expensive?"
"They're sure to be. Perhaps you could get a second-hand one."