“It must have been important.”

“Was,” curtly.  “Did you think I was joy riding again?”

“No, I heard you stirring and thought you might be sick.  I haven’t been able to get to sleep myself.”

Seeing how utterly worn out his uncle looked, Ted’s resentment took quick, shamed flight.  Poor Uncle Phil!  He never spared himself, always bore the brunt of everything for them all.  And here he himself had just snapped like a cur because he suspected his guardian of desiring to interfere with his high and mighty private business.

“Too bad,” he said.  “Wish you’d smoke, Uncle Phil.  It’s great to cool off your nerves.  Honest it is!  Have one?” He held out his case.

Doctor Holiday smiled at that, though he declined the proffered weed.  He understood very well that the boy was making tacit amends for his ungraciousness of a moment before.

“No, I’ll get to sleep presently.  It has been rather a wearing day.”

“Should say it had been.  I hope Aunt Margery doesn’t know about the wreck.  She’ll worry, if she knew Larry was coming east.”

“I wired her this evening.  I didn’t want to take any chance of her thinking he was in the smash.”

Ted laid down his cigarette.

“You never forget anybody do you, Uncle Phil?” he said rather soberly for him.

“I never forget Margery.  She is a very part of myself, lad.”

And when he was alone Ted pondered over that last speech of his uncle’s.  He wondered if there would ever be a Margery for him, and, if so, what she would think of the Madelines if she knew of them.

CHAPTER VII

DEVELOPMENTS BY MAIL

After the family had reassembled on the Hill the promised letter from Larry arrived.  He was staying on so long as his services were needed.  The enormous number of victims of the wreck had strained to the uttermost the city’s supply of doctors and nurses, and there was more than enough work for all.  The writer spared them the details of the wreck so far as possible; indeed, evidently was not anxious to relive the horrors on his own account.  He mentioned a few of the many sad cases only.  One of these was the instant death of a famous surgeon whose loss to the world seemed tragic and pitifully wasteful to the young doctor.  Another was the crushing to death of a young mother who, with her two children, had been happily on their way to meet the husband who had been in South America for a year.  Larry had made friends with her on the train and played with the babies who reminded him of his small cousins, Eric and Hester, Doctor Philip’s children.

A third case he went into more fully, that of a young woman—­just a mere girl in appearance though she wore a wedding ring—­who had received a terrible blow on the base of her brain which had driven out memory entirely.  She did not know who she was, where she was going, or whence she had come.  Her physical injuries, otherwise, were not serious, a broken arm and some bad bruises, nothing but what she would easily recover from in a short time; but, for all her effort, the past remained as something on the other side of a strange, blank wall.