y. Then she put a professional hand on her
pulse and her forehead.

"You've got the grip," she announced.

"I'm afraid I have, Eleanor, and Doctor Martin's out of town, and
won't be back till to-morrow when he comes to Aunt Ann. I don't know
what we'll do."

"I'll tend to things," Eleanor said. "You lie still and close your
eyes, and don't put your arms out of bed and get chilled."

"Well, you'll have to manage somehow," Beulah moaned; "how, I don't
know, I'm sure. Give Aunt Annie her medicine and hot water bags, and
just let me be. I'm too sick to care what happens."

After the door had closed on the child a dozen things occurred to
Beulah that might have been done for her. She was vaguely faint for
her breakfast. Her feet were cold. She thought of the soothing warmth
of antiphlogistine when applied to the chest. She thought of the
quinine on the shelf in the bathroom. Once more she tried lifting her
head, but she could not accomplish a sitting posture. She shivered as
a draft from the open window struck her.

"If I could only be taken in hand this morning," she thought, "I know
it could be broken."

The door opened softly. Eleanor, in the cook's serviceable apron of
gingham that would have easily contained another child the same size,
swung the door open with one hand and held it to accommodate the
passage of the big kitchen tray, deeply laden with a heterogeneous
collection of objects. She pulled two chairs close to the bedside and
deposited her burden upon them. Then she removed from the tray a
goblet of some steaming fluid and offered it to Beulah.

"It's cream of wheat gruel," she said, and added ingratiatingly: "It
tastes nice in a tumbler."

Beulah drank the hot decoction gratefully and found, to her surprise,
that it was deliciously made.

Eleanor took the glass away from her and placed it on the tray, from
which she took what looked to Beulah like a cloth covered omelet,--at
any rate, it was a crescent shaped article slightly yellow in tone.
Eleanor tested it with a finger.

"It's just about right," she said. Then she fixed Beulah with a stern
eye. "Open your chest," she commanded, "and show me the spot where
it's worst. I've made a meal poultice."

Beulah hesitated only a second, then she obeyed meekly. She had never
seen a meal poultice before, but the heat on her afflicted chest was
grateful to her. Antiphlogistine was only Denver mud anyhow. Meekly,
also, she took the six grains of quinine