tienne told Farr.
"Under the shade on the green grass she shall stay where outdoors can
paint her cheeks the very fine color."

But when the old man called for her at the good woman's house one
morning something else than the sun had painted the little girl's
cheeks--they were flushed with fever. He told the good woman to send
straight for the doctor, and went to his work much disturbed.

Later in the day the yard overseer, passing the rack, saw that the man
was working with furious energy. He was even reaching out his rake to
capture floating stuff before it touched the bars.

"This seems to be your busy day, Pickaroon," suggested the overseer.

"I make believe this old rack to be a good friend of mine and that the
float stuff be sickness come at him--so I work hard to keep it away."

The overseer went along about his business, commenting mentally on a
Frenchman's imagination.

When the big mill bells clanged the noon hour Etienne hurried to the
good woman's house. The city physician had been there and had left
medicine--two tumblers of it. He had hurried in and had hurried away and
had been curt and brusk and had not told her what was the trouble, so
the woman reported. But the child had been sleeping.

She was drowsy all that evening while Farr held her in his arms and
Etienne sat near by with Zelie Dionne, ministering solicitously.

"Her cheeks are not so hot," said the young man many times. He talked
hopefully to reassure himself as well as the others, for he had been
dreadfully frightened when he had come from his work. Fright had
trodden close on the heels of much joy--for the superintendent of
the Consolidated had taken him out of the hot trench that day and had
appointed him boss of twoscore Italian diggers, doubling his pay.

"I have been watching you," the superintendent told him. "You're built
to boss men. What kind of a bump was it that ever slammed you down like
this?"

The answer the superintendent got was a smile which put further
questions out of his mind.

"No, her cheeks are not so hot," affirmed Farr when he laid her in her
bed that night. "She will come along all right."

But at the end of a week languor still weighed on the child. There were
circles under her eyes and her cheeks were wan, and she did not clap
her hands with the old-time glee when he brought her new toys; the
playthings lay beside her on the bed and invited her touch--staring eyes
of dolls, beady eyes of toy dogs--with