he utmost
gravity.

"Yes, I did," he answered promptly. "Do you think--do you think--"

"Yes I do," she said, decidedly, adding to herself: "I think you are a
fool!" To him she continued: "I'll tell you what to do. Grandma is
afraid, like you, so I know all the preventives. Let me burn a match or
two under your nose so that the fumes will saturate your face; that will
counteract any bad effects from the kiss, and to prevent contagion
hereafter, get a good sized leek. You can find one at any grocer's: put
it in a bit of cloth, with a piece of camphor-gum, and wear it over the
pit of your stomach. You may even brave the small-pox with that about
your person."

"But won't it smell awfully?" Neil asked, with a shudder, as he thought
of wearing about his person an obnoxious leek, whose odor he abominated.

"It will smell some, but what of that? You can endure a great deal in
order to feel safe," Flossie replied.

Neil could endure a great deal where his personal safety was concerned,
and wholly deceived by Flossie's manner, he submitted to the burnt
matches, which nearly strangled him, and brought on so violent a fit of
coughing as made him fear lest he should burst a blood-vessel.

"I guess you are all right as far as the kiss is concerned," Flossie
said, nearly bursting with merriment. "And now for the leek and camphor.
I'll fix it for you."

He found the leek and the camphor and Flossie tied them up for him in a
bit of linen and bade him be quite easy in his mind, as with these
disinfectants he was impervious to the plague itself.

"What a coward he is, to be sure!" she said, as she watched him hurrying
down the hall to his room with his disinfectants. "Sir Jack told me he
was a milksop and not half worthy of Bessie, and he was right. I think
him an idiot. Leeks, indeed! Won't he smell, though, when the leek gets
warmed through and begins to fume! Phew!" and the little nose went up
higher than its wont as Flossie returned to the sick-room.

That night Neil wrote to his mother the exact condition of affairs,
telling her how he had found his aunt and cousin, whom he could not
leave without being stigmatized as a brute; telling her what Grey had
done for them; telling her that they owed old Mrs. Meredith twenty
pounds, and that unless she wished a subscription paper to be started
for them in the hotel, among the English, many of whom were her
acquaintances, she must send money to relieve their necessities, and pay