“I am going home to-morrow,” she announced simply.  “I would start to-night if it wasn’t too late to get the Washington train.  I shall have to go back there to pack up all my things.”

“But, Mary,” remonstrated Joyce, “mamma said not to.  She said positively we were to stay here and you were to make the most of what is left to you of this year at school.”

“I know,” was the quiet answer.  “I’ve thought it all over, and I’ve made up my mind.  Of course you mustn’t go back.  For no matter if the company does pay the expenses of Jack’s illness and allows him a pension or whatever it was mamma called it, for awhile, you couldn’t make fifty cents there where you could make fifty dollars here.  So for all our sakes you ought to stay.  But as long as I can’t finish my course, a few weeks more or less can’t make any difference to me.  And I know very well I am needed at home.”

“But Jack—­he’ll be so disappointed if you don’t get even one full year,” argued Joyce, who had never been accustomed to Mary’s deciding anything for herself.  Even in the matter of hair-ribbons she had always asked advice as to which to wear.

“Oh, I can make it all right with Jack,” said Mary confidently.  “I wouldn’t have one happy moment staying on at school knowing I was needed at home.  And I am needed every hour, if for nothing more than to keep them all cheered up.  When I think of how busy Jack has always been, and then those awful days and weeks and years ahead of him when he can’t do anything but lie and think and worry, I’m afraid he’ll almost lose his mind.”

“If mamma only hadn’t been so decided,” was Joyce’s dubious answer.  “It does seem that you are right, and yet—­we’ve never gone ahead and done things before without her consent.  I wish we could talk it over with her.”

“Well, I don’t,” persisted Mary.  “I’m going home and I’m perfectly sure that down in her heart she’ll be glad that I took matters in my own hands and decided to come—­for Jack’s sake if nothing else.”

“Then we’d better telegraph her to-night—­”

“No,” interrupted Mary, “not until I’m leaving Washington.  Then it will be too late for her to stop me.”

“Oh, dear, I don’t know what to do about it,” sighed Joyce wearily, passing her hand over her eyes.

“Just help me gather up my things,” was the firm reply.  The big bandbox still stood open in the middle of the floor and the hat with its wreath of white lilacs lay atop just as Mary had dropped it.  She stooped to pick it up with a pathetic little smile that hurt Phil worse than tears, and stood looking down on it as if it were something infinitely dear.

“The last thing Jack ever gave me,” she said as if speaking to herself.  “It doesn’t seem possible that it was only this afternoon we bought it.  It seems months since then—­my last happy day!”

Henrietta’s latch-key sounded in the lock of the front door, and Phil rose to go, knowing the situation would all have to be explained to her.  No, there was nothing he could do, they assured him.  Nothing anybody could do.  And promising to come around before train-time next morning he took his leave, heart-sick over the tragedy that had ruined Jack’s life, and would always shadow the little family that had grown as dear to him as his own.