erlooked letter for him, and had preferred this method
of delivery.

"They're asking for ye ba'ack at t' hoose--ba'ack to Costrell's Varm....
Noa, noa, doctor--'tis the old Granny, not the yoong wench. She's gone
off in a sowart of fayunt."

Dr. Nash turned his pony's head without a word, nodded and started. Mr.
Barlow called out, as Parthian information, as many particulars as he
thought would be audible, and sped on his course, to stand and deliver
at every cottage on the route susceptible to correspondence.

"She was looking queer," said the doctor to himself, stimulating his
pony's concept of a maximum velocity. "But I never thought of this. The
Devil fly away with the Australian twin! Why couldn't she wait six
weeks?"

He was immensely relieved to find the old lady sitting up, with her
granddaughter applying vinegar to her forehead. She was discountenancing
this remedy, or any remedy, as needless, in an unconvincingly weak
voice. She would come round if left to herself. She rallied her forces
at sight of the doctor, rather resenting him as superfluous. However,
his knowledge of the cause of her upset made him an ally, a fact she
probably became aware of. He suggested, after exhibiting two or three
drops of hartshorn in a wineglass of water, that she should be taken at
her word.

While she came round, left to herself in the big armchair, with her eyes
shut and a pillow to lean back on, Maisie the granddaughter told her
tale--the occurrence as she had seen it. Hearing the doctor's sounds of
departure, she had discontinued a fiction of repose--not admitted as
fiction, however--to come down and see what on earth Granny and he had
been talking their tongues off for. Granny was reading her letter from
Dave Wardle, and just the moment she saw her, gave a cry and fell back
in her chair; whereon Maisie, running out, told Mr. Barlow to catch the
doctor and send him back, then returned to her grandmother. She herself
did not seem seriously upset, though much puzzled and surprised.

The doctor saw something. "Where's the letter?" said he.

"Here on the baby," said Mrs. Maisie. And there on the baby, enjoying,
in a holy sleep, deep draughts of imaginary milk, was Dave's large
round-hand epistle.

The doctor glanced at it, and had the presence of mind to
say:--"Ho!--letter from a kid!" and suppress it. "Your Granny wants
something," said he, diverting Mrs. Costrell's attention from it. The
old lady was rallying visibly