"But you aren't eating it, dear," insisted Mrs. Gordon. "Don't you find it good?" "Oh, yes, Cousin Sally," answered Marian politely. "It's very nice indeed, but I'm not hungry." Marian's careful bringing up by a French governess, surrounded with every advantage of foreign travel and good associations, had given her an outward semblance of good manners, which had, however, no real obedience or docility behind them. Mrs. Gordon said nothing more for the moment, and changed the subject by asking William where he had been on his walk around the island with Elizabeth, after they had taken some papers and magazines to the soldiers in the post hospital. But after luncheon when Lucy and Marian had gone out on the piazza and sat down at a table to finish the pile of gauze, Mrs. Gordon took out her sewing and seated herself near them. P 26 P 26 "It isn't very hard, Marian," Lucy began, responding promptly to a faint suggestion made by Marian before luncheon that she would like to learn to make dressings, and spreading out a piece of gauze after a critical glance at her fingers. "Take this silver knife,—I brought out two,—to pat it smooth with. Now fold it over, so, and fold it the other way,—twice. Then smooth it flat and it's all done. I'll show you again." "Marian," said Mrs. Gordon, looking at her little cousin's delicate profile that looked so pretty as she bent over her work, "I am going to speak to you right now about the way you sit at our table and eat nothing. Why, my child, I can't let you spend the summer here and make no better meals than you have been doing. You need your food as much as Lucy does,—more, because you have your health to build up." Marian had turned her head to listen, and as Mrs. Gordon paused she said, doubtfully, "Why, I'm not very hungry, Cousin Sally, except once in a while." "That's because your appetite has got used to being coaxed and encouraged while you were ill. I dare say there are a few things that you particularly like and are willing to eat. But I mean you must learn to help it along for yourself by trying to eat what a girl your age ought to. I'm sure you want to do everything you can to get well soon, don't you?" P 27 P 27 "Oh, yes, I do," said Marian
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