Margery’s eyes smiled tender raillery at her husband.  He chuckled at the arraignment, and admitted its justice.  Still, boys were not mystery ladies.  She must grant him that.  Then he sobered.

“It is only you that makes me hesitate, Margery mine.  You are carrying about as heavy a burden now as any one woman ought to take upon herself, with me and the house and the children and Granny.  And here is this crazy nephew of mine proposing the addition to the family of a stranger who hasn’t any past and whose future seems wrapped mostly in a nebular hypothesis.  It is rather a large order, my dear.”

“Not too large.  It isn’t as if she were seriously ill, or would be a burden in any way.  Besides, it is Larry’s home as well as ours, and he so seldom asks anything for himself, and is always ready to help anywhere.  Do you really mind her coming, Phil?”

“Not if you don’t.  I am glad to agree if it is not going to be too hard for you.  As you say, Larry doesn’t ever ask much for himself and I am interested in the case, anyway.  Shall we wire him to bring her, then?”

“Please do.  I shall be very glad.”

“You are a wonder, Margery mine.”  And the doctor bent and kissed his wife before going in to telephone the message to be sent his nephew that night, a message bidding him and the little stranger welcome, whenever they cared to come to the House on the Hill.

And far away in Pittsburgh, Larry got the word that night and smiled content.  Bless Uncle Phil and Aunt Margery!  They never failed you, no matter what you asked of them.

CHAPTER VIII

THE LITTLE LADY WHO FORGOT

Larry Holiday was a rather startlingly energetic person when he once got under way.  The next morning he overruled the “Mystery Lady’s” faint demurs, successfully argued the senior doctor into agreement with his somewhat surprising plan of procedure, wired his uncle, engaged train reservations for that evening, secured a nurse, preempted the services of a Red Cap who promised to be waiting with a chair at the station so that the little invalid would not have to set foot upon the ground, and finally carried the latter with his own strong young arms onto the train and into a large, cool stateroom where a fan was already whirring and the white-clad nurse waiting to minister to the needs of the frail traveler.

In a few moments the train was slipping smoothly out of the station and the girl who had forgotten most things else knew that she was being spirited off to a delightful sounding place called Holiday Hill in the charge of a gray-eyed young doctor who had made himself personally responsible for her from the moment he had extricated her, more dead than alive, from the wreckage.  Somehow, for the moment she was quite content with the knowledge.

Leaving his charge in the nurse’s care, Larry Holiday ensconced himself in his seat not far from the stateroom and pretended to read his paper.  But it might just as well have been printed in ancient Sanscrit for all the meaning its words conveyed to his brain.  His corporeal self occupied the green plush seat.  His spiritual person was elsewhere.