in a cheerful tone.
'He only pretends to like you because you're what he calls a "case." If
you'd got asthma, now, he'd treat you as if you were putting it all on,
and make you feel a jolly humbug. _I_ know him!'

'Of course, you're always right, Kit,' said Babs, growing more unhappy
every minute, 'but--but----'

'He treated us all like kids the first day you were ill,' said
Christopher, scowling at the recollection; 'and once, when Jill was
blubbing because you weren't so well, we got in a funk and went off on
our own, Peter and I, to fetch him; and he wouldn't come. He said no one
could do anything for you by just coming and looking at you, and we
weren't to disturb him for nothing at all--or some such rot. Then we
found that he'd cooked up an arrangement with Finny not to come unless
_she_ sent for him. Just like him!'

Barbara was struggling feebly to keep back her tears. She could not think
what was making her want to cry so much.

The boy had stopped scowling, and was chuckling softly to himself. Barbara
held her breath, and thought that if he would only talk about something
else, she might be able to keep from crying. Perhaps the table by the
window might stop swimming about, too.

'We've scored one against him at last, though,' her brother was saying,
in a voice that seemed suddenly to have gone a long way off. 'He must
be quite at the other end of the gallery,' Babs thought. Yet some one
was certainly sitting on the edge of her bed, because she could feel the
mattress jumping up and down.

'We struck that little kid in the yard just now--the one who nearly gave
you scarlet fever,' Christopher went on gaily. 'He came to know how you
were, or something. Bobby Hearne, I think he called himself. Well, we
got him to go to the doctor's house with a message from his aunt, who
lives five miles t'other side of Crofts, to say that she had just fallen
downstairs and nearly killed herself, and would he go to her at once!
Thirty miles there and back, all for nothing! Rather a score, eh? It was
my idea, too, not Peter's!'

He turned to Barbara for approval, and found her sobbing bitterly. She had
heard every word he said, with horrible distinctness, though his voice had
come from such a long way off. She had tried to stop him, but she could
not make a sound till she began to cry.

'Babe! I say, don't! What's up, old girl?' exclaimed Kit, staring at her
in consternation. At any time it was an event, to make the Babe