Salome in distress.
"Why, he may die there. He must be very ill."

"Looks more to me as if he had fainted from sheer starvation,"
returned Clemantiny brusquely as she picked him up in her lean,
muscular arms. "Why, he's skin and bone. He ain't hardly heavier than
a baby. Well, this is a mysterious piece of work. Where'll I put him?"

"Lay him on the sofa," said Miss Salome as soon as she had recovered
from the horror into which Clemantiny's starvation dictum had thrown
her. A child starving to death on her doorstep! "What do you do for
people in a faint, Clemantiny?"

"Wet their face--and hist up their feet--and loosen their collar,"
said Clemantiny in a succession of jerks, doing each thing as she
mentioned it. "And hold ammonia to their nose. Run for the ammonia,
Salome. Look, will you? Skin and bone!"

But Miss Salome had gone for the ammonia. There was a look on the
boy's thin, pallid face that tugged painfully at her heart-strings.

When Chester came back to consciousness with the pungency of the
ammonia reeking through his head, he found himself lying on very soft
pillows in a very big white sunny kitchen, where everything was
scoured to a brightness that dazzled you. Bending over him was a tall,
gaunt woman with a thin, determined face and snapping black eyes, and,
standing beside her with a steaming bowl in her hand, was the nice
rosy lady who had given him the taffy on the boat!

When he opened his eyes, Miss Salome knew him.

"Why, it's the little boy I saw on the boat!" she exclaimed.

"Well, you've come to!" said Clemantiny, eyeing Chester severely. "And
now perhaps you'll explain what you mean by fainting away on doorsteps
and scaring people out of their senses."

Chester thought that this must be the mistress of Mount Hope Farm, and
hastened to propitiate her.

"I'm sorry," he faltered feebly. "I didn't mean to--I--"

"You're not to do any talking until you've had something to eat,"
snapped Clemantiny inconsistently. "Here, open your mouth and take
this broth. Pretty doings, I say!"

Clemantiny spoke as sharply as Aunt Harriet had ever done, but somehow
or other Chester did not feel afraid of her and her black eyes. She
sat down by his side and fed him from the bowl of hot broth with a
deft gentleness oddly in contrast with her grim expression.

Chester thought he had never in all his life tasted anything so good
as that broth. The boy was really almost starved. He drank every drop
of it. C