nes over their dolls. By and by Dr.
Dudley came up the walk, and Polly ran to open the door for him.

The physician acknowledged the attention with a grave smile, and
then went directly to the telephone, calling for Miss Batterson.

David sat up. The girls listened breathlessly.

Presently they heard arrangements being made for the nurse to go
to the Colonel at once, and they gathered from what was said that
David's great-uncle was ill with typhoid fever, and that the
Doctor had ordered him to bed.

"He has kept up too long," regretted Dr. Dudley, as he hung the
receiver on its hook. "As it is he'll have to go through a course
of fever. He is furious at the prospect, but it can't be helped.

"I'm so sorry," mourned Polly.

Then, seeing that there was no likelihood of a story or even talk
from the Doctor, she proposed, softly to Leonora, that they go
upstairs.

"No, stay here with David, if you wish; you're not in the way.
I'm going back with Miss Batterson."

So they remained, while the physician put some medicines in his
case, and gave David directions regarding a problem caller.

Soon the nurse came in, suit case in hand, and the two went off
together.

"I hope mother won't hear of it right away," the lad mused. "She
thinks so much of Uncle David. She'd want to go and do something
for him, you know, and she could n't, and so she'd worry."

Polly recalled her recent drive through Forest Park, and could
scarcely realize that the big, strong man who had made the time so
pleasant for her was now weak and miserable from disease.

David related incidents of his mother's life with her uncle when
she was a small girl, one leading to another, until, suddenly, Dr.
Dudley opened the door.

"What!" he exclaimed. "My girlies not abed yet! Why, it is
nearly nine o'clock! Miss Lucy will think I have kidnapped you."

They hurried away, with laughing good-nights, after being assured
by the Doctor that probably Colonel Gresham would "come out all
right."

David slept downstairs now, in a tiny room adjoining the
physician's, and his last thought that night was of the
strangeness of it all--Uncle David's hurrying to catch Dr.
Dudley for him, and his being the first to notify the Doctor of
his uncle's illness, while they had not even a bowing acquaintance
with each other!

For a few days there was no alarming change in colonel Gresham's
condition. Then he grew worse. He became delirious, and remained
so, reco