oming, aren't you?' said Peter, who was impatient
to have done with this inaction and to carry out the glorious rescue they
had planned. The worst of it was that half its gloriousness seemed to have
subsided before the pleasant manners of the head-mistress.

'I should think she was coming, indeed!' declared Wilfred. 'You don't
suppose I'm going to lose two hours of bed for nothing, do you?'

Christopher, who had been silently observing Barbara all the while, shook
his head slowly. 'She won't come,' he said gruffly. 'They've made her
different already.'

A vague feeling of uneasiness crept over Barbara. Kit was always right;
_was_ she different already? She gave herself an involuntary shake. 'Never
mind about me!' she exclaimed. 'Tell me about Crofts, and what you've been
doing since I left, and----everything. Do you mean to say your cold is
better already, Kit?'

'Ah!' Wilfred hastened to tell her; 'that's because of the new doctor.'

'There's a new doctor just settled in this part of the world,' explained
Peter. 'Your Finny thinks an awful lot of him, and that's why Auntie
Anna sent for him last night, when Kit got bad, instead of going to the
old-fashioned chap who lives round the corner at Crofts. _We_ don't think
anything of him at all, though; do we, boys?'

'He _is_ a funny man,' commented Robin.

'He's a beast,' said Kit, conclusively.

'He's a clever beast, anyway,' protested Wilfred, feeling bound to support
the profession. 'He's done you an awful lot of good already, Kit, and
he lets you go out as much as you like. It's the modern treatment, or
something.'

'Why is he a beast, Kit?' asked Barbara, sympathetically. The world had
convinced her so strongly, since yesterday afternoon, of its possibilities
in the way of beasts, that she felt sure Kit was right about it.

'He grunts at you as though you weren't fit to speak to; and he isn't a
bit sorry for you, as old Browne used to be, but he seems to think you
are making it all up,' said Christopher, in an injured tone.

'He doesn't like boys; that's at the bottom of it,' added Peter. 'He
looked black as thunder because we were rotting in the library with Kit,
and he cleared us all out before he'd even look at his tongue.'

'And he never sent for a silver spoon, nor nothing,' cried Robin, in
much excitement. 'How did he 'xamine your throat, Kit, if he hadn't got
a silver spoon?'

'Shoved a thing like a skewer down, that he took out of his pocket,' sa