"Everything is on the bias to-day," she said, "and you most of all from your appearance. I wish I could see things straightened out for once. The little school-ma'am, who turns everybody's head, is sick in her room, and did not come down to breakfast. Therefore we had a Quaker meeting. If you had been present with your long face, the occasion would have been one of oppressive solemnity. Ik appeared as dejected as if he were to be executed before dinner, and scarcely ate a mouthful; I never saw a fellow so changed in all my life. Although your artist friend had a rapt, absorbed look, he was still able to absorb a good deal of steak and coffee. I saw him and Miss Burton emerge from a private parlor last night, and he probably understands Miss Burton's malady better than the rest of us. Why—what's the matter? Would to heaven I understood your malady better! Are you sick?"
"Yes," said Ida, rising abruptly from the table, "I am sick—sick of myself, sick of the world."
"Good gracious!" exclaimed Mrs. Mayhew, sharply, "are you so wrapt up in that fellow Sibley, that you can't live without him?"
Ida made a slight but expressive gesture of protest and disgust; then said, in a low tone, as if to herself: "If my own mother so misjudges me, what can I expect of others?"
Mrs. Mayhew followed her daughter to her room with a perplexed and worried look.
"Ida," she began, "you are all out of sorts; you are bilious; you've got this horrid malaria, that the doctors are always talking about, in your system. Let me send for our city physician, Doctor Betts. Never was such a man at diagnosis. He seems to look right inside of one and see everything that's going on wrong."
"For heaven's sake don't send for him then!" exclaimed Ida.
Mrs. Mayhew looked askance at her daughter a moment, and then asked bluntly:
"Why? What's going on wrong in you?"
"I do not know of anything that's going on right,—to use your own phraseology."