“Only,” continued the Old Lady, “I won’t part with your uncle’s picture.  Don’t ask me to part with your uncle’s picture.”

“You won’t have to part with anything.  I’ll—­I’ll get something to do.  I’m not worrying.  There’s nothing to worry about.”

She stooped down and tenderly kissed the wrinkled forehead.

A vague fear clutched at the Old Lady’s heart.

“Then, Juliana, you are not well.  Hadn’t you better see”—­she hesitated—­pausing with unwonted delicacy for her words—­“a doctor?”

“I don’t want to see a doctor.  There is nothing the matter with me.”  And still insisting that there was nothing the matter with her, she went to bed.

And old Martha had come with her early morning croak to call Miss Juliana; she had dumped down the hot-water can in the basin with a clash, pulled up the blind with a jerk, and drawn back the curtains with a clatter, before she noticed that Miss Juliana was up all the time.  Up and dressed, and sitting in her chair by the hearth, warming her feet at an imaginary fire.

She had been sitting up all night, for her bed was as Martha had left it the night before.  Martha approached cautiously, still feeling her way, though there was no need for it, the room being full of light.

She groped like a blind woman for Miss Juliana’s forehead, laying her hand there before she looked into her face.

After some fumbling futile experiments with brandy, a looking-glass and a feather, old Martha hid these things carefully out of sight; she disarranged the bed, turning back the clothes as they might have been left by one newly wakened and risen out of it; drew a shawl over the head and shoulders of the figure in the chair; pulled down the blind and closed the curtains till the room was dark again.  Then she groped her way out and down the stairs to her mistress’s door.  There she stayed a moment, gathering her feeble wits together for the part she meant to play.  She had made up her mind what she would do.

So she called the Old Lady as usual; said she was afraid there was something the matter with Miss Juliana; thought she might have got up a bit too early and turned faint like.

The Old Lady answered that she would come and see; and the two crept up the stairs, and went groping their way in the dark of the curtained room.  Old Martha fumbled a long time with the blind; she drew back the curtains little by little, with infinite precaution letting in the light upon the fearful thing.

But the Old Lady approached it boldly.

“Don’t you know me, Jooley dear?” she said, peering into the strange eyes.  There was no recognition in them for all their staring.

“Don’t know me, m’m,” said Martha soothingly; “seems all of a white swoon, don’t she?”

Martha was warming to her part.  She made herself busy; she brought hot water bottles and eau de cologne; she spent twenty minutes chafing the hands and forehead and laying warmth to the feet, that the Old Lady might have the comfort of knowing that everything had been done that could be done.  She shuffled off to find brandy, as if she had only thought of it that instant; and she played out the play with the looking-glass and the feather.