“Whatever made you do it?” she asked without preface.

“Do what?”

“Marry papa.”

“Because—­well, because he asked me.”

“You never would have done it, if you had seen us first,” Theodora responded half whimsically, half discontentedly.  “Hope and Hubert are all right; but the rest of us are enough to turn your hair white.  I was bad enough; and now Phebe is forsaking the world and taking to skeletons, and Allyn is at war with the whole human race, including Mr. Mitchell.  Well, Phebe, what now?”

“I heard my name and thought I’d come and take a hand in the discussion,” Phebe announced, as she strolled into the room.  “Have I done anything you don’t like?  If I have, just mention it.”

“Nothing more than usual,” Theodora said, laughing.  “Goodness me, Babe!  What’s that?”

“What’s what?” Phebe cast an apprehensive glance behind her.

“In your hand?”

“That?  Oh, that’s my tibia.  I was studying where it articulates into the fibula.  It’s ever so nice.  Just see the cunning little grooves.”

“Booh!” Theodora laughed, even in her disgust.  “I am not weak-minded, Babe, but those things do not appeal to me.”

“Every one to his taste,” Phebe said loftily.  “I like bones better than Browning, myself.  Isabel St. John thinks she will be a nurse.”

“Then you can hunt in pairs,” Theodora commented irreverently.  “I pity the patient.  Do you really like this sort of thing, Babe?”

Phebe rested her cheek meditatively against the upper end of her tibia.

“Yes, of course; or else I shouldn’t be doing it.  Bones, that is, dead ones, are nice and neat; and I don’t think I should mind setting live ones.  Of course it isn’t going to be all bones; but I suppose even literature has its disagreeable sides.”

“Yes,” Theodora assented, with a passing memory of the pillow reposing on the lawn outside her window.  “After all, Babe, I think you lack the real artist’s devotion to your work.  Even mumps ought to be beautiful in your eyes and meningitis a delight to your soul.  The day will come that you will give up medicine and take a course in plain cooking, now mark my words.”

“Thanks; but I prefer tibias to tomatoes,” Phebe responded.  “When I am the great Dr. McAlister, you will change your tune.”

“There will never be but one great Dr. McAlister,” Theodora answered loyally.  “No, mother, I must not stay to lunch, not even if Babe would grill her tibia for me.  Billy gets very grumpy, if I leave him alone at his meals.  Good-bye, Babe.  Don’t let anything happen to your grooves.”

She went away with a laugh on her lips; but the laugh vanished, as she went up to her writing-room once more and paused for a moment before her closed desk.  Then her face cleared, as she hurriedly put herself into Billy’s favorite gown and ran down the stairs to meet him in the hall.  The woes of book-making and the worries of her family never clouded Theodora’s welcome to her husband.