"Yes, she's a wonder, isn't she? Well, as I said, we took care of the fever, all right; but the cerebral affection has been more persistent, and she hasn't convalesced as you would expect in a twelve-year-old child. She seems to be laboring under a sort of nervous depression, not so much physical as mental ... in fact, a psychos. It's common enough in older people, of course; but hanged if I ever saw anything just like it in a perfectly normal, and naturally happy child."
"H-m-m-m. What are the symptoms?"
"Psychological, all of them. She mopes; seems to take no healthy interest in anything, and, as a result, has no appetite; bursts out crying over the most trivial things—such as the chance of you're being blown up by a submarine on the way home—and frequently for no cause at all. Of course I packed the family off to the shore, as soon as she was able to be moved, in the belief that the change of scene and the sea air would effect a cure, but it hasn't. I can't find a thing wrong with her, physically, nor could Morse. I took him down on my own hook, in consultation, one day. It's a rather unusual case of purely psychological depression, and in my opinion all she needs is ..."
"A generous dose of Smiles," interrupted Donald.
"By thunder, you've struck it," cried Philip, as he gave the arm of his chair a resounding thump. "What an ass I've been not to have thought of that before, particularly as she has been so constantly in my thoughts. It's another case of a thing being too close to one for him to see it."
Donald stiffened suddenly. He held the match, with which he was about to light a cigar, poised in mid-air until the flame reached his fingers, and then blew it out, unused.
"In fact, it was about her, Don, that I was so anxious to see you," the other went on. His own nervousness made him unconscious of the effect which his words had produced on Donald. "Of course, she's practically of legal age now; but I know that she still regards you as her guardian and that in a sense you stand in loco parentis toward her. Certainly she regards your word as law. So I thought that, as she is practically alone in the world, it would be the only right and honorable thing to ... to speak to you, first."
"To speak to me ... first?" echoed Donald, a trifle unsteadily, as he struck another match and watched its flame, with unseeing eyes, until it, too, burned his fingers.
"Yes. Great Scott, can't you guess what I'm driving at? The plain fact is ... is that I love her, Don. I ... I want to marry her."
The words smote the older man's senses like a bolt from a clear sky, and they reeled, although he managed, somehow, to keep outwardly calm.