His lively horror at the bare suggestion of such a thing drew her into a half-hearted defense of the project.  Numbers of the girls she knew down here who had been doing war work were going enthusiastically into things like that—­or at least were announcing an invincible determination to do so.  Only they were cleverer than she at that sort of thing and could hope for better jobs.  They were in luck.  They liked it—­looked forward to a life of it as one full of engaging possibilities.  But to Mary it was nothing, she hardly pretended, but a forlorn last shift.  If one couldn’t draw nor write nor act nor develop some clever musical stunt, what else was there for a girl to do?

“Well, of course,” said Rush, in a very mature philosophical way and lighting a cigarette pretty deliberately between the words,—­“of course, what most girls do, is—­marry somebody.”  Then he stole a look around at his sister to see how she had taken it.

There was a queer look that almost frightened him in her blue eyes.  Her lips, which were trembling, seemed to be trying to smile.

“That’s father’s idea,” she said raggedly.  “He’s as anxious now that I should marry somebody—­anybody, as he was that I shouldn’t five years ago—­before he found Paula.  You see I am so terribly—­left on his hands.”

There was, no doubt, something comical about the look of utter consternation she saw on her brother’s face, but she should not have tried to laugh at him for a sob caught the laugh in the middle and swept away the last of her self-control.  She flung herself down upon the divan and buried her face in one of the pillows.  He had seen men cry like that but, oddly enough, never a woman.  What he did though was perhaps as much to the point as anything he could have done.  He sat down beside her and gathered her up tight in his arms and held her there without a word until the tempest had blown itself out.  When the sobs had died away to nothing more than a tremulous catch in each indrawn breath, he let her go back among the pillows and turn so that she could look up at him.  By that time the sweat had beaded out upon his forehead, and his hands, which had dropped down upon her shoulders, were trembling.

“Well,” she asked unsteadily.  “What do you think of me now?”

He wanted to bend down and kiss her but wisely he forbore.  “It’s easy to see what’s the matter,” he said.  “This war business you have been doing has been too much for you.  You’re simply all in.”  Then happily he added, “I’d call you a case of shell-shock.”

She rewarded that with a washed-out smile.  “What’s the treatment going to be?” she asked.

“Why,” he said, “as soon as I’m done tucking you up properly in this eiderdown quilt, I’m going out to your icebox and try to find the makings of an egg-nog.  Incidentally, I shall scramble up all the rest of the eggs I find and eat them myself.  And then I’ll find something dull to read to you until you go to sleep.  When it’s dark enough so that my evening clothes won’t attract too much attention, I’ll go back and get into uniform; then I’ll buy two tickets for Chicago on the fast train to-morrow, and two tickets for a show to-night; and then I’ll come back and take you out to dinner.  Any criticisms on that program?”