wo after she came back, she felt horribly ill, and
her face was flushed.

"The child's ill," said Mrs. Raeburn.

"Ill? Nonsense!" argued Charlie. "Why, look at her color. Ill? Whoever
heard? Never saw no one look better in my life. Look how bright her eyes
is."

"You ignorant man!" said his wife, and sent for the doctor.

The doctor said it was scarlet fever, and Jenny was taken away in
blankets to the hospital. She felt afraid at first in the long, quiet
ward with all the rows of nurses and palms and thin beds from which
heads suddenly popped up.

"Do you think you'll go to heaven when you die?" the charge-nurse
whispered to Jenny as she tucked her in.

"I don't care where I go," said Jenny; "as long as there isn't no
castor-oil."

As she lay waiting to get better and watched the lilac buds breaking
into flower outside the big windows, she could not help wishing she were
in Galton again, although in a way she liked the peace and regularity of
hospital life. It amused her to have breakfast at half-past five and
lunch at nine. The latter she laughed at all the time she was in the
hospital. Her convalescence was an exceptionally long one, but she had
two jolly weeks before she left, when she could run about and help to
carry the meals to the other patients. She danced once or twice then for
the benefit of the ward and was glad that everybody clapped her so
loudly. She cried when she left in August to go home to her family.

Chapter VII: _Ambition Wakes_

The great event came about because Mrs. Raeburn, in return for similar
favors in the past, went to superintend the behavior of pasty-faced
Claude and Percy so that her sister could spend a fortnight with a
brother-in-law lately elected to the Urban Council of an unimportant
town in Suffolk. So, with some misgivings on the side of his wife,
Charlie was left in charge of 17 Hagworth Street.

One day Mr. Vergoe came downstairs to ask his landlord if he would let
Jenny and Alfie and Edie accompany him to the pantomime of "Aladdin" at
the Grand Theater. Charlie saw no harm in it, and the party was
arranged. It appeared that Miss Lilli Vergoe had been temporarily
released from the second line of girls at the Orient Theater of
Varieties in order to make one of a quartette of acrobatic dancers in
the pantomime. Under the circumstances, her grandfather considered
himself bound to attend at least one performance, although he felt
rather like a mute at his own o