"You have been out?" It was the question he had put to her on her first night in the house.
"Peter's wife has been ill, and I promised the doctor to give her a hypodermic at eleven o'clock. It must be midnight now. They kept me some time at the cottage."
He glanced at the clock. "Yes, it is after twelve. We are working you overtime."
She had crossed the room quickly on her way to the door, when he called her name, and she stopped and turned to look at him.
"Miss Meade, I have wanted to ask you something about Letty when she was not with us."
"I know," she responded, with ready sympathy. "It isn't easy to talk before her without letting her catch on."
"You feel that she is better?"
"Much better. She has improved every day in the last month or two."
"You think now that she may get well in time? There seems to you a chance that she may grow up well and normal?"
"With care I think there is every hope that she will. The doctor is greatly encouraged about her. In this age no physical malady, especially in a child, is regarded as hopeless, and I believe, if we keep up the treatment she is having, she may outgrow the spinal weakness that has always seemed to us so serious."