o much that
she ate and ate and ate until she couldn't eat another mouthful.

Perhaps she ate too much, but I doubt it. It is much more likely to
have been the climb that she took in the hot sunshine directly after
that dinner, and the climb wouldn't have hurt her, if she had ended
the dinner without that last potato and the extra turnover and two
cookies; or if she had rested a little before the climb. But perhaps,
it wasn't either the dinner or the climb; it may have been the pink
ice-cream of the evening before; or that time in the celery patch, the
previous morning, when she had forgotten her hat and wouldn't go back
to the house for it because Henry hadn't a hat on, and why should a
girl need a hat more than a boy? Or it may have been all those things
put together. She certainly had had a slight headache when she went to
bed.

Whatever caused it, the fact was that on the ride home Elliott began
to feel very sick. The longer she rode the sicker she felt and the
more appalled and ashamed and frightened she grew. What could be going
to happen to her? And what awful exhibition was she about to make of
herself before all these people to whom she had felt so superior?

Before long people noticed how white she was and by the time the wagon
reached the brick house at the cross-roads poor Elliott hardly cared
if they did see it. Her pride was crushed by her misery. Mrs. Gordon
and Harriet came out to welcome Alma home and they hesitated not a
minute.

"Have them bring her right in here, Jessica. No, no, not a mite of
trouble! We'll keep her all night. You go right along home, you and
Laura. Mercy me, if we can't do a little thing like this for you
folks! She'll be all right in the morning."

The words meant nothing to Elliott. She was quite beyond caring where
she went, so that it was to a bed, flat and still and unmoving. But
even in her distress she was conscious that, whatever came of it, she
had had a good time.

CHAPTER VIII

A BEE STING

Elliott was wretchedly, miserably ill. She despised herself for it and
then she lost even the sensation of self contempt in utter misery. She
didn't care about anything--who helped her undress or where the
undressing was done or what happened to her. Mercifully nobody talked;
it would have killed her, she thought, to have to try to talk. They
didn't even ask her how she felt. They only moved about quietly and
did things. They put her to bed and gave her something to