een minutes after he was sleeping like a kitten. He has a sore
throat and considerable fever. Could you--can you--at least, will you,
go up to my house on an errand?"

"Certainly I can. I know it inside and out as well as my own."

"Very good. On the clock shelf in the sitting-room there is a bottle of
sweet spirits of nitre; it's the only bottle there, so you can't make
any mistake. It will help until the doctor comes. I wonder you didn't
send for him yesterday?"

"Davy wouldn't have him," apologized his uncle.

"Wouldn't he?" said Lyddy with cheerful scorn. "He has you under pretty
good control, hasn't he? But children are unmerciful tyrants."

"Couldn't you coax him into it before you go home?" asked Anthony in a
wheedling voice.

"I can try; but it isn't likely I can influence him, if you can't.
Still, if we both fail, I really don't see what 's to prevent our
sending for the doctor in spite of him. He is as weak as a baby,
you know, and can't sit up in bed: what could he do? I will risk the
consequences, if you will!"

There was a note of such amiable and winning sarcasm in all this, such
a cheery, invincible courage, such a friendly neighborliness and
cooperation, above all such a different tone from any he was accustomed
to hear in Edgewood, that Anthony Croft felt warmed through to the core.

As he walked quickly along the road, he conjured up a vision of autumn
beauty from the few hints nature gave even to her sightless ones on this
glorious morning,--the rustle of a few fallen leaves under his feet, the
clear wine of the air, the full rush of the swollen river, the whisking
of the squirrels in the boughs, the crunch of their teeth on the nuts,
the spicy odor of the apples lying under the trees. He missed his mother
that morning more than he had missed her for years. How neat she was,
how thrifty, how comfortable, and how comforting! His life was so dreary
and aimless; and was it the best or the right one for Davy, with his
talent and dawning ambition? Would it not be better to have Mrs.
Buck live with them altogether, instead of coming twice a week, as
heretofore? No; he shrank from that with a hopeless aversion born of
Saturday and Monday dinners in her company. He could hear her pour her
coffee into the saucer; hear the scraping of the cup on the rim, and
know that she was setting it sloppily down on the cloth. He could
remember her noisy drinking, the weight of her elbow on the table, the
creaking