“I bet I will beat you out, Joan—­but it wasn’t—­Scotland, you know it—­was—­home!”

Just before the top was reached Patricia grew quiet and grave.  She clung to Joan with one hand and patted Cuff with the other.

“I think,” she whispered, “that when dogs and little children can look you in the eye, God can!”

She did not speak much after that—­but she sang in fragments, hummed when very tired, and murmured—­“Nice little old Joan and Cuff,” just before she reached—­home!

It was all so crushingly sudden that Joan was dazed and could not feel at all.  Fortunately, the nurse arranged to stay with her for a week, and the doctor acted, through all his burdened days, as if an extra load was really a comfort to him.  He asked Joan what steps he should take about Patricia, and Joan stared at him.

“You see, Pat just belonged to me,” she explained; “and—­and well! must I decide anything just now?”

“I think we must—­about the body—­you know!” The doctor felt his heart beat quicker as he gazed into the wide, tearless eyes.

“The—­the body?  Oh!  I see what you mean.  I—­I was going to take Pat home next summer; this summer—­but——­”

“Perhaps we can arrange to have the body remain here in Chicago until you make plans.”

“Oh! if you only could.”  Joan looked her gratitude.

And so Patricia Leigh was laid to rest in the vault of strangers until the girl who had loved her could realize the thing that had overtaken her.

In the lonely rooms the empty stillness acted like a drug upon Joan.  She mechanically performed the small services she used to perform so gladly for Patricia.  She held Cuff in her arms as she repeated: 

“It cannot be, Cuff, dear, it cannot!  Such a terrible thing couldn’t happen—­not without warning.  She will come back; she will, Cuff—­please don’t look so sad!”

It was three weeks after Patricia went that Cuff met Joan as she entered the room—­with Patricia’s slippers which he had found where Joan had hidden them!  The sight of the pathetic little figure touched something in Joan and it sprang to hurting, suffering life.

For hours the girl wept in the dark rooms.  She begged for death; anything to dull forever the pain that she could not understand.  But the grief saved her and she began to think for herself, since no one was there to think for her.  The city was full of sickness and death.  Those who could, must do for themselves.  Joan had not written home; she wondered what she had done in all the ages since Pat went.

All Patricia’s small affairs were in order.  Her money and Joan’s were banked under both names, and the dreary little home was but an empty shell.

“I’ve failed—­utterly,” the girl sobbed over Cuff in her arms; “I told Aunt Dorrie when I found that out—­I would go to her.”

So Joan sold the furniture and sublet the rooms; she paid her small debts and promised her music teacher that she would continue her work in New York.  Then she turned wearily, aimlessly—­homeward, with Cuff in her arms.