irectly in her path and clutched her arm. Then she started as if
suddenly awakened from a sleep, and exclaimed, "Why, Dr. Bainbridge,
what do you mean by making me jump so? I nearly lost my skin! I never
saw you at all. Where did you come from--the clouds?"

"No, miss. If I had been there you would have seen me before this, for
if ever anyone was walking in the clouds, it was you just this minute.
Come along, I want you, dreamer. Can you do me a favor, a big one?"

"'Pends upon what it is," answered Peace, thoroughly awake now.

He laughed at the judicious tone of voice and the familiar cant of the
curly brown head, and answered promptly, "I want you to play Good
Samaritan for a little while, be nurse for one of my patients--"

"Nurse?" She looked at him with wide-open eyes, secretly wondering
whether he knew what he was talking about.

"Yes, ma'am, nurse!" he thundered. "Annette Fisher is sick, very sick,
and I have told her mother time after time that she must not be left
alone, yet in spite of all my cautions, that red-headed ignoramus has
taken the rest of the caboodle and gone off to town, leaving Annette all
alone in the house until the father gets home tonight. The child's fever
has been soaring sky-high for days, and I was just beginning to think I
had it in control and could pull her through when that old
termagant-gossip of a mother, who doesn't deserve to have chick or
child, hikes off to spend the afternoon with relatives in the city for a
chance to look up bargains at The Martindale. What are embroideries and
dress goods compared with the life of a child? Won't she get a piece of
my mind the next time I lay eyes on her?" So angry and indignant was the
old doctor that he had wholly forgotten himself, and spoke as he would
never have thought of doing under different circumstances.

Peace brought him to the earth by agreeing heartily, "Well, I would 'f I
was you, and I'd give her a good big piece, too. I'll nurse Annette if
you want me to. Shall I give her a bath and dose her with medicine every
few minutes, like we did mother? Does she need to be wrapped up in wet
rags or painted with _irondye_? Or do you want me to feed her _grool_
and broth?"

"You don't have to do a single thing but stay with her and keep her
from fretting until I can get someone from the village to go down there.
I gave her a bath just now myself, and she has taken her medicine--all I
want her to have for the present. She isn't to e