"If you didn't know what to do with me, Alice, then why did you ask
me to come?"
"But I didn't," Alice responded, too astonished to modify her denial
into a polite form of fibbing.
Ethers tone was gently superior.
"Oh, yes; you did."
"When?"
"When you were leaving home. You said then that I must be sure to
come up to spend a week with you, early in the winter." Then her
accent changed. "You poor tired child!" she said, as she rose and
crossed to her cousin's side. "This work is too hard for you; you
look as if you had been fighting the Boers themselves, instead of
merely enteric and bullet holes. I think it is just as well that I
am here to look out for you, for a few days."
Alice lifted her hand to the hand that lay against her cheek.
"I am glad to see you, Cooee dear. I am only so surprised that it
makes me slow to tell you so. If you can sleep here, to-night, I can
find a better place for you in the morning."
"This will do," Ethel answered, while she slowly drew the pins from
her hat. "It is neat, even if it isn't spacious. Really, Alice, I
should have let you know; but it was only just as I was starting
that I found I could come at all.
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