chair and stared at the
breakfast-table standing just as they had all left it.

"Don't you stir, Sis!" cried Bob, returning with the others. "Al and I'll
do the dishes." Then, as he saw an expression of disfavour cross his
brother's face at this unwelcome proposal, he added quickly, "She's sick,
Sally is, with all this, and it's time somebody noticed it."

They all looked at her. She tried to smile up at them, but the
unwilling tears came instead. "I'll be all right, if I can just lie
down a while," she said.

Then they rallied, in alarm. Not one of them but loved Sally as the
dearest thing in the world, however careless of her comfort one or
another of them might now and then seem to be.

Max put a brotherly arm round her. "Tired out, little girl?" he asked,
gently, and led her toward the couch in the living-room.

"All for those ungrateful duffers!" As he followed to put a pillow under
his sister's head Alec looked as if he would like to knock at least one
of the "duffers" down.

"She's had all she could do to keep up, for twenty-four hours!" cried
Bob, pulling a small knit rug over Sally's feet.

She managed to smile at them, choking back quite unwonted tears--Sally
was no baby, to cry at a touch of fatigue. She had known they would be
very good to her, once they understood.

It was Uncle Timothy who at once became practical. He drew up a chair
beside the couch and took Sally's wrist in his, counting carefully. Then
he laid his hand on her forehead, against her flushed cheeks. He bade her
put out her tongue, and surveying that tell-tale member through his
spectacles, came to his conclusions. These he did not inflict upon Sally,
who had closed her eyes, and lay like a tired child. Instead, he beckoned
Max into another room, and said, "She's sick, sure enough. Pulse jumping,
skin hot and dry--and too tired to move. Suppose you telephone Doctor
Wood to look in this morning."

Max lost no time. He went down stairs to telephone, that Sally-might not
hear, and in his suddenly roused anxiety made his message so urgent that
the doctor arrived within the hour. He was the family physician long
employed by the Lanes, and he had known Sally from her babyhood. It took
him but the space of a brief, yet thorough, examination to form his
opinion. He communicated it, under his breath, to Sally's "four men," who
had tiptoed anxiously out into the hall where he had beckoned them.

"It looks mighty like typhoid," he said--an