"She's pulling on her anchor," answered Jean. "We all do. Some days I get really homesick for the girls back home and everything that we haven't got here,--the library and the art galleries and the lectures and the musicales and everything. I think we ought to write down and ask some of the girls to come up."
"I don't. Not until Dad's well."
Doris was out of hearing. Jean looked over at Helen, who in some way always seemed nearer her own age than Kit.
"Helen, honest and truly, do you think Dad's getting any better?" she asked in a low voice.
Helen hesitated, her face showing plainly how she dreaded acknowledging even to herself the possibility of his not improving.
"He eats better now, and he can sit up."
"But he looks awful. It fairly makes my heart ache to look at him sometimes. His eyes look as if they were gazing away off at some land we couldn't see."
"Jean Robbins, how can you say that?"
"Hush. Don't let Mother hear," cautioned Jean anxiously. "I had to tell somebody. I think of it all the time."
"Well, don't think of it. That's like sticking pins in a wax statue back in the Middle Ages, and saying, 'He's going to die, he's going to die,' all the time. He's getting better."