he girl said nervously. "Don't cry. Let's go into the
house and find something."

Up-stairs and down she trailed the shrieking child. At the Cameron
farm there were two hamamelis bottles, one in the bath-room, the other
on a shelf in the kitchen. But nothing rewarded her search here. If
only some one were at home! If only the telephone weren't out of
order! Desperately she took down the receiver, to be greeted by a
faint, continuous buzzing. There was nothing for it; she must leave
Johnny and run to a neighbor's. But Johnny refused to be left. He
clung to her and kicked and screamed for pain and the terror of
finding his secure baby world falling to pieces about his ears.

"It's a shame, Johnny. I ought to know what to do, but I don't. You
come too, then."

But Johnny refused to budge. He threw himself on his back on the veranda
and beat the floor with his heels and wailed long heart-piercing wails
that trembled into sobbing silence, only to begin all over with fresh
vigor. Elliott was at her wits' end. She didn't dare go away and leave
him; she was afraid he might kill himself crying. But mightn't he do
so if she stayed? He pushed her away when she tried to comfort him.
There was only one thing that he wanted; he would have none of her, if
she didn't give it to him.

Never in her life had Elliott Cameron felt so insignificant, so
helpless and futile, as she did at that minute. "Oh, you poor baby!"
she cried, and hated herself for her ignorance. Laura would have known
what to do; Harriet Gordon would have known. Would nobody ever come?

"What's the matter with him?" The question barked out, brusque and
sharp, but never had a voice sounded more welcome in Elliott Cameron's
ears. She turned around in joyful relief to encounter a pair of
gimlet-like black eyes in the face of an old woman. She was an ugly
little old woman in a battered straw hat and a shabby old jacket,
though the day was warm, and a faded print skirt that was draggled
with mud at the hem. Her hair strayed untidily about her face and
unfathomable scorn looked out of her snapping black eyes.

"It's a--a bee sting," stammered the girl, shrinking under the scorn.

"Hee-hee-hee!" The old woman's laughter was cracked and high. "What
kind of a lummux are you? Don't know what to do for a bee sting!
Hee-hee! Mud, you gawk you, mud!"

She bent down and slapped up a handful of wet soil from the edge of
the fern bed below the veranda. "Put that on him," she s