"There's no use pretending you're happy," said Peggy relentlessly. "I know you're not. It's very brave, but useless."
"But has he fits?" demanded Marjorie with unmistakable intensity.
"He has not," said Peggy scornfully. "I don't know where you'd get the idea. He fainted this morning when he tried to get up. He didn't come down to breakfast, and we thought him tired out, and let him lie. But after awhile, perhaps at nine or so, we thought it unnatural that any one should be asleep so long. So I tiptoed up, because when you're as fat as mother it does wear you to climb more stairs than are needful. And there was the poor man, all dressed beautifully, even to his glasses with the black ribbon, lying across the bed, in a faint."
"Are you sure it was a faint?" the Ellisons demanded with one voice.
Peggy looked more scornful, if possible, than she had for some time.
"We had to bring him to with aromatic spirits of ammonia, and slapping his hands. And the doctor says it's his heart. That is, it isn't really his heart, but his nerves are so bad that they make some sort of a condition that it's just as bad as if he had heart-trouble really. Simulated heart-trouble, the doctor called it. You understand, he doesn't pretend, himself; his heart makes his nerves pretend, as well as I can make it out. Sure it must be dreadful to have nerves that act that way to you. I wonder what nerves feel like, anyway."
Peggy herself was getting off the topic, through her interest in the subject.
"But how did you find out that I was beating Marjorie?" inquired
Francis calmly, pulling her back.
She shot a furious glance at him.
"I wish you hadn't reminded me. I'd forgotten all about hating you for your horrid ways. It was just before he came to. He thought he was talking to you, and he said, 'You had no right to force her to do that work, Ellison, it will kill her.'"