ward if I faint again, will you? I really
and truly don't do it on purpose. And I do hate to give you all this
trouble."

"Don't you worry," said Mother; "it's you that have the trouble, you
poor dear--not us."

And she kissed him just as if he had been Peter. "We love to have you
here--don't we, Bobbie?"

"Yes," said Bobbie--and she saw by her Mother's face how right she had
been to bring home the wounded hound in the red jersey.

Chapter XIII. The hound's grandfather.

Mother did not get back to her writing all that day, for the
red-jerseyed hound whom the children had brought to Three Chimneys had
to be put to bed. And then the Doctor came, and hurt him most horribly.
Mother was with him all through it, and that made it a little better
than it would have been, but "bad was the best," as Mrs. Viney said.

The children sat in the parlour downstairs and heard the sound of the
Doctor's boots going backwards and forwards over the bedroom floor. And
once or twice there was a groan.

"It's horrible," said Bobbie. "Oh, I wish Dr. Forrest would make haste.
Oh, poor Jim!"

"It IS horrible," said Peter, "but it's very exciting. I wish Doctors
weren't so stuck-up about who they'll have in the room when they're
doing things. I should most awfully like to see a leg set. I believe the
bones crunch like anything."

"Don't!" said the two girls at once.

"Rubbish!" said Peter. "How are you going to be Red Cross Nurses, like
you were talking of coming home, if you can't even stand hearing me say
about bones crunching? You'd have to HEAR them crunch on the field of
battle--and be steeped in gore up to the elbows as likely as not, and--"

"Stop it!" cried Bobbie, with a white face; "you don't know how funny
you're making me feel."

"Me, too," said Phyllis, whose face was pink.

"Cowards!" said Peter.

"I'm not," said Bobbie. "I helped Mother with your rake-wounded foot,
and so did Phil--you know we did."

"Well, then!" said Peter. "Now look here. It would be a jolly good thing
for you if I were to talk to you every day for half an hour about broken
bones and people's insides, so as to get you used to it."

A chair was moved above.

"Listen," said Peter, "that's the bone crunching."

"I do wish you wouldn't," said Phyllis. "Bobbie doesn't like it."

"I'll tell you what they do," said Peter. I can't think what made him so
horrid. Perhaps it was because he had been so very nice and kind all the
earlier part of