r, that I couldn't refuse. She said she would
do anything for her, even to reading poetry!"

They all laughed, for Frieda's English reading was distinctly lacking in
smoothness, and her rendering of poetry would doubtless be harrowing.

"That would hurt Catherine more than the toothache," said Hannah, "but
they will find something better to do," and she walked sedately down the
path between the doctors, her Bible and Quarterly in her hands,
wondering if martyrs on the way to the stake chatted on indifferent
topics, and noticed birds and bees and grasshoppers.

Meanwhile Catherine and Frieda up stairs were surprising themselves and
each other. The first glimpse of Catherine's swollen cheek had roused
Frieda's sense of mirth, but compassion for physical pain followed
quickly.

"_Ach weh! Weh! Schade! Schade!_" she had murmured in a deep
sympathetic tone, which Catherine found unexpectedly soothing.
Accustomed as she had always been to brisk remedial measures, and beyond
those, to wordless pity and a deliberate ignoring of the evil, she was
interested and touched by this demonstration. She had felt shy with
Frieda from the first, wishing so earnestly to know her well and win her
love that she could not be perfectly simple and natural with her. This
shyness had combined with the little aloofness, which every one felt in
Catherine, to shut Frieda's heart. But this morning the barriers were
down. Catherine, instead of being perfect, exquisite, was nothing short
of hideous. The agent had proved that she could look absurd. Here she
was shown mortal to the point of needing help from Frieda. What made
Hannah feel awkward and useless, caused Frieda to come to the front,
competent and tender. She made Catherine cozy with pillows, and sat
beside her, speaking, in tones which carried healing and comfort, of all
sorts of interesting and delightful things and places. She told stories
of her school in Germany, of her home and Hannah's visit, of her little
friend who had been to a birthday party at the palace, of the strange
"church social" to which Hannah had taken her in Berlin, of her rides
with Herr Karl in the Tiergarten, rapturous descriptions of the
Tiergarten itself, dropping unconsciously into German phrases, her eyes
shining and her cheeks taking on an unwontedly charming color, while
Catherine lay and listened, entranced, as though she were in a world
where pain had no power.

It was not so pleasant at the little gray chu