s
in the night. You must put that idea out of your head, dear. You're
getting too big a boy to be afraid of the dark."

"Four isn't big, is it?"

"You're nearer five than four now, honey. Let me button your nightgown,
and lie down and try to go to sleep while mamma sings to you. Does your
throat really hurt you?"

"It feels as if it had teensy-weensy marbles in it. They came there when
I woke up in the dark and thought that you were going away to-morrow."

"Well, if your throat hurts you, of course mamma won't leave you. Open
your mouth wide now so I can look at it."

She lighted a candle while Harry, kneeling in the middle of his little
bed, followed her with his blue eyes, which looked three times their
usual size because of his flushed cheeks and his mounting excitement.
His throat appeared slightly inflamed when she held the candle close to
it, and after tucking him beneath the bed-clothes, she poured a little
camphorated oil into a cup and heated it on the small alcohol lamp she
kept in the nursery.

"Mamma is going to put a nice bandage on your throat, and then she is
going to lie down beside you and sing you to sleep," she said
cheerfully, as she cut off a strip of flannel from an old petticoat and
prepared to saturate it with the heated oil.

"Will you stay here all night?"

"All night, precious, if you'll be good and go fast asleep while I am
singing."

Holding tightly to her nightdress, Harry cuddled down between the
pillows with a contented sigh. "Then I don't mind about the marbles in
my throat," he said.

"But mamma minds, and she wants to cure them before morning. Now lie
very still while she wraps this good flannel bandage over the sore
places."

"I'll lie very still if you'll hold me, mamma."

Blowing out the candle, she crept into the little bed beside him, and
lay singing softly until his hands released their desperate grasp of her
nightdress, and he slipped quietly off to sleep. Even then, remembering
her promise, she did not go back to her bedroom until daylight.

"I wonder what makes Harry so afraid of the dark?" she asked, when
Oliver awoke and turned questioningly towards her. "He worked himself
really sick last night just from pure nervousness. I had to put
camphorated oil on his throat and chest, and lie beside him until
morning. He is sleeping quietly now, but it simply frightens me to death
when one of them complains of sore throat."

"You've spoiled him, that's what's the m