The fortnight sped only too rapidly.  Ned departed, and Katy settled herself in the familiar corner to wait till he should come back again.  Navy wives have to learn the hard lesson of patience in the long separations entailed by their husbands’ profession.  Katy missed Ned sorely, but she was too unselfish to mope, or to let the others know how hard to bear his loss seemed to her.  She never told any one how she lay awake in stormy nights, or when the wind blew,—­and it seemed to blow oftener than usual that winter,—­imagining the frigate in a gale, and whispering little prayers for Ned’s safety.  Then her good sense would come back, and remind her that wind in Burnet did not necessarily mean wind in Shanghai or Yokohama or wherever the “Natchitoches” might be; and she would put herself to sleep with the repetition of that lovely verse of Keble’s “Evening Hymn,” left out in most of the collections, but which was particularly dear to her:—­

    “Thou Ruler of the light and dark,
     Guide through the tempest Thine own Ark;
     Amid the howling, wintry sea,
     We are in port if we have Thee.”

So the winter passed, and the spring; and another summer came and went, with little change to the quiet Burnet household, and Katy’s brief life with her husband began to seem dreamy and unreal, it lay so far behind.  And then, with the beginning of the second winter came a new anxiety.

Phil, as we said in the last chapter, had grown too fast to be very strong, and was the most delicate of the family in looks and health, though full of spirit and fun.  Going out to skate with some other boys the week before Christmas, on a pond which was not so securely frozen as it looked, the ice gave way; and though no one was drowned, the whole party had a drenching, and were thoroughly chilled.  None of the others minded it much, but the exposure had a serious effect on Phil.  He caught a bad cold which rapidly increased into pneumonia; and Christmas Day, usually such a bright one in the Carr household, was overshadowed by anxious forebodings, for Phil was seriously ill, and the doctor felt by no means sure how things would turn with him.  The sisters nursed him devotedly, and by March he was out again; but he did not get well or lose the persistent little cough, which kept him thin and weak.  Dr. Carr tried this remedy and that, but nothing seemed to do much good; and Katy thought that her father looked graver and more anxious every time that he tested Phil’s temperature or listened at his chest.

“It’s not serious yet,” he told her in private; “but I don’t like the look of things.  The boy is just at a turning-point.  Any little thing might set him one way or the other.  I wish I could send him away from this damp lake climate.”