beet. His eyes is runnin',
too, an' he needs a atmosizer to blow in his head, to clear out the
snuffles so's he kin open his lungs, widdout keepin' his mouth open all
th' time."

Instead of fainting with horror as Tom had pictured she might, Polly
laughed at Katrina's description, and Mrs. Latimer smiled and turned to
her guests to excuse herself, by saying:

"Tom just came in, poor boy, with a stuffy cold in his head. I'll put his
feet in mustard and see that he drinks a hot glass of doctored lemonade,
then I'll be back."

So Tom, instead of bidding his mother an eternal farewell and dying alone
and abandoned, as he had planned, in a hospital ward, was soon made to
scald his feet in hot mustard water, while his mother's flannel kimono
replaced his bedraggled clothing, and a heavy blanket was wrapped about
him, and he was offered a nasty drink of lemonade, but what else was in
it other than lemon only his mother knew!

By this time he felt so wretched that he cared nothing for solitaires or
fiancees; all he wanted was to get one good long breath through his nose
once more before he choked to death.

His mother had returned to the merry-making in the parlors, and Tom sat
huddled in his unbecoming bedding in his mother's dressing-room. Every
few minutes he had to use Katrina's "atmosizer" for his nose, or gasp for
breath.

Just as the perspiration began to pour out of every pore, and his feet
felt like scalded lobsters, and the vaseline his mother had smeared in
his eyes and over his nose, to void any chaffing, had been trickled all
over his face, Polly tiptoed into the room that opened to the
dressing-room where he sat.

He held his breath, fearing lest she hear him gasp and find him in this
awful predicament. He could not see her after she closed the hall-door,
but he wondered what she was doing. At this moment, a tickling in his
nose began and he knew it portended a sneeze! He must prevent it, or
Polly would track him down. If she ever saw him in this condition, after
all his hard study to propose gracefully, he would take poison!

But the sneeze was imperative, and it burst forth in such an explosion,
that Polly screamed faintly from just behind the door of the little room.

"Go'way! I won'd see anyone," commanded Tom.

"But you'll let me come and see how you are, won't you, Tom dear?" coaxed
Polly, appearing at the open door.

"No! You above everyone. I'm goin' to a hozpidal as zoon ads the
ambulance g