too late to take me down to-night. Katy, don't you want to
go and see the wagon, and tell me about it, and pour the strawberries
into a great dish on the tea-table, and all of you have some, and bring
up the flowers when you come back after tea?"

When I came back with the flowers, Fanny smiled rather pensively, and
did not ask me about the chair.

"Fanny," said I, "the Doctor says you may go out to-morrow forenoon, and
stay as long as you like, if it is fair; and the sun is going down as
red as a Baldwin apple. The chair is contrived so, with springs and the
cushions, that you can lie down in it, as flat as you do on your sofa,
when you are tired of sitting up."

"O Katy," cried she, with a little quiver in her voice, for she was too
weak to bear anything, "I have been seeing how inconsiderate I was! To
think of letting you exert and strain yourself in that way!"

In came the Doctor, looking saucy. "Fanny won't go, I suppose? I thought
so. I said so to De Quincey [his horse], as I drove him down the street
at a creep, sawing his mouth to keep him from running away, till he
foamed at it epileptically, while all the sick people were sending
north, south, east, and west after all the other doctors. I hope you
won't mention it, said I to the horse; but Fanny is always getting up
some kind of a row. But there is Katy now,--Katy is a meek person, and
always does as she is bid. She has been cooped up too much, and bleached
her own roses with teaching the Greenville misses to sickly o'er with
the pale cast of thought. Katy needs gentle exercise. So does Deacon
Lardner." Deacon Lardner was the fat inhabitant of the town, and ill of
the dropsy. "I will send Katy out a-walking, with Deacon Lardner in Miss
Dudley's chair."

I laughed. Fanny smiled. The Doctor saw his advantage, and followed it
up. "Julia, my dear, get my apothecary's scales out of the office. Put
an ounce weight into one, and Fanny into the other. Then put the ounce
weight into the chair. If Katy can draw that, she can draw Fanny."

This time, it was poor Fanny who had the laugh to herself.

The next day, the Doctor carried her down stairs, as soon as she could
bear it after her breakfast, and left her on a sofa, in the little
parlor, to rest. About ten o'clock, he came back from his early rounds.
I was dressed and waiting for him, with Fanny's bonnet and shawl ready.
I put them on her, while he drew out the chair from its safe stable in
the hall. Once aga