he boy. He
felt bruised all over, that was all.

"Where does it hurt the most?"

"Around my back."

"Here?" The doctor placed his hands firmly on either side of the
patient's spine.

"O-o-oh, don't!" he waited.

The physician straightened up and regarded the pupil gravely.

"Anything else?"

"My stomach feels queer and it hurts like the dickens every once in a
while. I lost my breakfast, this morning, too!"

A tense note crept into the inquisitor's voice. "Have you ever been
vaccinated?"

"No sir. We just moved to the city this summer."

"Smallpox!" The principal turned a little pale.

"Are you sure?" he asked.

"The pain in the back and the vomiting are almost certain indications."
He turned to the boy. "Tell your mother to notify the health department
the very minute you get home. Your house must be quarantined
immediately."

Much more was said regarding precautions, and measures, and medicines,
to which the patient listened stolidly. A disinterested observer might
have said that he was waiting solely for the order to leave school.

As the door closed, the authorities exchanged worried glances.

"The health record of the school has always been remarkably good," began
the principal.

"But it's an epidemic," cut in the worried physician. "And what an
epidemic. Four cases this morning, and two yesterday, ranging all the
way from mumps to smallpox. Downer, the school ought to be closed and
thoroughly disinfected."

"Doesn't it strike you as peculiar that the cases are confined to one
room, Ten, and that boys are the only victims?"

"Did you ever hear of a germ carrier. A person who, through some source
of exposure, carries germs here and there on his or her clothes, and is
perfectly immune to them. That's what you must have in that room. As for
your last question, merely a coincidence. The boys happened to be the
most susceptible to exposure, that's all."

A bell clanged noisily. Mr. Downer stood up and looked thoughtfully from
his window upon the orderly lines of pupils that no sooner passed from
the school threshold than they became a howling, shouting mass of
seeming infant maniacs.

"Seems to me," he said, "Miss Brown was telling about a girl named
Margaret, Margaret Moran, whose mother took in washing for a living.
Spoke of it as a great joke. Said the girl wore a new dress every day,
sometimes too long, sometimes too short, but never a fit. An ingenious
way to reduce one item of the prese