ily was so big and so
careless! "Please, Mrs. Callahan, be careful with her every minute. I
love her so very dearly."

"Bless your heart, I wouldn't have harm come to her for the world. There
she sits like a queen on her throne, and ain't took down but by my own
hands with the medicine bottle. I've told the kids I'll skin 'em alive
if they put finger on her."

Saturday morning brought Peggy to see Anne,--a sad Peggy with downcast
eyes and red nose and croaking voice.

"You've a bad cold, Peggy, haven't you?" said Miss Dorcas.

Peggy nodded. "Yessum, lady. Terrible bad. Maybe so I'll have the
pneumony, like Lois, and maybe so I'll die."

"Oh, I hope not!" exclaimed Anne who had hastened out when she heard
Peggy. She hoped Honey-Sweet was in that bundle--though she knew it was
too small.

"Mommer sent me," said the saddened Peggy with the downcast eyes, "to
ask you ladies, please'm, not to come home to-day."

"Is Lois worse?" was Miss Dorcas's anxious question.

"No'm. The doctor says she's lots better, but"--Peggy hesitated--"he
says she mustn't have no company and I think he says she mustn't have no
company till Monday. And here's something for you." She thrust into
Anne's hand a newspaper package which being opened revealed a gauze fan
spangled with silver, soiled and frayed, but the pride of Peggy's heart.
"And you won't come till Monday, ma'am?" she urged.

Miss Dorcas agreed, but Miss Margery, when she heard the tale, shook her
head.

"That's one of Peggy's tales that I'm going to look into," she said. "I
have to see a girl in that neighborhood and I'll go there this
afternoon."

"And you'll let me go with you? Please," pleaded Anne. "I'm so homesick
for Honey-Sweet. She's never been away from me before. You can hand her
out the window and let me visit her, if I can't see Lois."

It was a raw December day and none of the Callahan children were
playing, as usual, in front of the little brown house. The
sewing-machine was rattling away at such furious speed that Miss
Margery's knock at the door was unheard. The Charity lady hesitated a
moment. "If Lois can stand that rattle-ty-banging, she can stand sight
and sound of us. Let's go in," she said and she opened the door.

Anne's eyes went straight to the mantel-piece. Honey-Sweet was not
there. Anne looked down at the pallet, where Lois lay asleep. No
Honey-Sweet there. The child's questioning, appealing eyes turned to
Lois's mother.

Mrs. Callahan dr