urry colors, couldn't you
just please pretend that the tinge of green is the flavor
of pleasant pastures, and that the streak of red is the
Cardinal Flower that blazed along the edge of the noisy
brook?

"Goodby till to-morrow,

"MOLLY."

With a face so altogether crowded with astonishment that there was no
room left in it for pain, Stanton's lame fingers reached out
inquisitively and patted the warm, woolly fabric.

"Nice old Lamb--y" he acknowledged judicially.

Then suddenly around the corners of his under lip a little balky smile
began to flicker.

"Of course I'll save the letter for Cornelia," he protested, "but no
one could really expect me to paste such a scrumptious blanket-wrapper
into a scrap-book."

Laboriously wriggling his thinness and his coldness into the black
sheep's luxuriant, irresponsible fleece, a bulging side-pocket in the
wrapper bruised his hip. Reaching down very temperishly to the pocket
he drew forth a small lace-trimmed handkerchief knotted pudgily across
a brimming handful of fir-balsam needles. Like a scorching hot August
breeze the magic, woodsy fragrance crinkled through his nostrils.

"These people certainly know how to play the game all right," he
reasoned whimsically, noting even the consistent little letter "M"
embroidered in one corner of the handkerchief.

Then, because he was really very sick and really very tired, he
snuggled down into the new blessed warmth and turned his gaunt cheek
to the pillow and cupped his hand for sleep like a drowsy child with
its nose and mouth burrowed eagerly down into the expectant draught.
But the cup did not fill.--Yet scented deep in his curved, empty,
balsam-scented fingers lurked--somehow--somewhere--the dregs of a
wonderful dream: Boyhood, with the hot, sweet flutter of summer woods,
and the pillowing warmth of the soft, sunbaked earth, and the crackle
of a twig, and the call of a bird, and the drone of a bee, and the
great blue, blue mystery of the sky glinting down through a
green-latticed canopy overhead.

For the first time in a whole, cruel tortuous week he actually smiled
his way into his morning nap.

When he woke again both the sun and the Doctor were staring pleasantly
into his face.

"You look better!" said the Doctor. "And more than that you don't look
half so 'cussed cross'."

"Sure," grinned Stanton, with all the deceptive, undauntable optimism
of the Just-Awakened.

"Nevertheless,"