You are always
getting up private theatricals, and this is just the right time."

"Lawrence Raeburn you are a trump!" said Amy, flying round to her
brother and giving him a hug. "We'll propose it at the first meeting of
the Ten, and it'll be carried by acclamation."

"Now," said Grace, rising and saying good-afternoon to my mother, with a
courtesy to the rest of us, "I'm going straight home to break ground
there and prepare my mother for great events."

Walking over the fields in great haste, for when one has news to
communicate, one's feet are wings, Grace was arrested by a groan as of
somebody in great pain. She looked about cautiously, but it was several
minutes before she found, lying under the hedge, a boy with a broken
pitcher at his side. He was deadly pale, and great drops of sweat rolled
down his face.

"Oh, you poor boy! What is the matter?" she cried, bending over him in
great concern.

"I've broke mother's best china pitcher," said the lad, in a despairing
voice.

"Poof!" replied Grace. "Pitchers can be mended or replaced. What else is
wrong? You're not groaning over a broken pitcher, surely!"

"You would, if it came over in the _Mayflower_, and was all of your
ancestors' you had left to show that you could be a Colonial Dame.
Ug-gh!" The boy tried to sit up, gasped and fell back in a dead faint.

"Goodness!" said Grace; "he's broken his leg as well as his pitcher.
Colonial Dames! What nonsense! Well, I can't leave him here."

She had her smelling salts in her satchel, but before she could find
them, Grace's satchel being an _omnium gatherum_ of a remarkably
miscellaneous character, the lad came to. A fainting person will usually
regain consciousness soon if laid out flat, with the head a little lower
than the body. I've seen people persist in keeping a fainting friend in
a sitting position, which is very stupid and quite cruel.

"I am Doctor Wainwright's daughter," said Grace, "and I see my father's
gig turning the corner of the road. You shall have help directly. Papa
will know what to do, so lie still where you are."

The lad obeyed, there plainly being nothing else to be done. In a second
Doctor Wainwright, at Grace's flag of distress, a white handkerchief
waving from the top of her parasol, came toward her at the mare's
fastest pace.

"Hello!" he said. "Here's Archie Vanderhoven in a pickle."

"As usual, doctor," said Archie, faintly. "I've broken mother's last
pitcher."

"And your leg