The trees and grass were sodden with wet, but the dreariness outside did not equal the dreariness within. Aunt Dannie wandered up and down the house with tear-stained cheeks, murmuring weakly to herself:
"What shall we all do! Everything is going to pieces for want of a head!"
The three young maids quarrelled with each other, and, realising that their mistress's tight hand was for the time withdrawn, spent most of their time in gossip and surmises about the future. Chuckles' absence brought an unusual quiet and stillness into the atmosphere, and Sidney, standing in her deep mourning by the window, began to feel that deeper trouble than her own seemed to be brewing in the farm.
She thought of Monica, who had boasted that she could never remember a day's illness in her life; Monica, strong and active, whose greatest joy was striding over her fields in all weathers; whose greatest penance was to sit still for any given time indoors; and who was now condemned by the doctor to be a cripple for life and never walk again.
"Oh!" cried Sidney, raising her sweet face to the sky. "I wish it had been me. I wish I could bear it for her. I have no ties now, nothing to demand my health and strength, and I should be able to draw comfort from the One Monica does not know. I don't see how she will be able to endure. It's a terrible verdict."
"Sidney, my dear, she is asking for you."
Aunt Dannie broke in upon her musings, and as Sidney went upstairs in obedience to the summons, her heart was saying:
"Oh, God, help me to help her. Do Thou help her Thyself."
Monica lay on her bed, a wreck of her former self. She could not move without pain, but she tried to smile when she saw Sidney.
"How soon shall I be about again?" she said. "The doctor looks so mysterious when I question him. Did he say anything to you this morning?"