energy; and I led him, faintly remonstrating, through the Bankhead
back gate that opens opposite ours.

Mother was glad to see Sam, heel and all, and sympathetically supplied
the cream and handkerchief and a needle and thread without laying down
the mat she was putting in a difficult hundred-and-fifty round on.
Mother is so used to Sam that she forgets that he is not her fifth or
sixth son, and she treats him accordingly. After she had given us all
the surgical necessities she retired into the living-room by the lamp to
put her mind entirely on the mat, in perfect confidence that I could do
the right thing by my wounded neighbor. And I did.

First, as I had always done, I bathed Sam's great big pink-and-white
foot in hot water and then in cold, sitting on the floor with a
bath-towel in my lap to get at it while Sam wriggled and squirmed at
both hot and cold just as he had always done.

"Go on, boil me," he said, as I poured the last flash of heat from the
tea-kettle on the floor beside me.

"Now a frost," he groaned, as I dashed ice-water out of a pitcher on the
blister and lifted the foot into my lap on the bath-towel.

"If you touch the bottom of my foot I'll yell 'murder,'" he said as I
began to pat all around the blister in the gentlest and most considerate
manner possible. I knew he meant what he said, so I was careful as I
wound and clipped and sewed.

"I never fixed as nice a one as that for you before," I said, with
pride, as he drew on his silk sock with its huge hole over as neat a
bandage as it was possible for human hands to accomplish. "I love to tie
you up, Sam."

"Thank you, and I return the compliment," answered Sam, both smouldering
and smiling down at me as if he were saying something to tease me. "And
now as a reward for your kindness I am going to knock you down with some
news." And as he spoke we went on out to the porch, Sam walking like a
new man.

"Oh, the 'worse' thing! I had forgotten about that. Tell me, Sam," I
answered, as I leaned against one of the pillars of the porch and he
seated himself on the railing beside me.

"Well," said Sam, slowly, "this is not worse for you, just for me; that
is, at the present speaking, with nothing but the hay-loft handy. I
don't know just how I'll manage."

"What?"

"Pete," answered Sam.

"What about Peter? Oh, Sam, Peter isn't ill, is he?" And I reached out
and clutched Sam's arm frantically. It takes alarm to test the depths of
one's affec