th all her might. The mad
creatures swerved and dashed themselves and her against a telegraph
pole.

When they picked up little Billy and Fanny they were both unconscious.
One of Billy's little arms was broken, so violently had he been flung
about and against the iron bars of the scat. Fanny's injuries were
more serious.

They took her home to her spotless house with the children's dinner set
out on the red tablecloth in the kitchen. The pussy willows the
children had brought her the day before were in a vase in the center.
Her husband came home and spoke to her but she neither saw him nor
heard. They gave him a blood-stained bank book with his name on it.

And so she lay for days and sometimes Doc Philipps thought she would
live and at other times he was sure she couldn't; but if she lived he
knew that she would never again flit like vagrant sunshine through
Green Valley streets. She would spend the rest of her days in a wheel
chair or on crutches.

When they got courage finally to tell her, Fanny only smiled and said
nothing. But she ate less and smiled more and steadily grew weaker and
weaker and as steadily refused to see her husband.

"No," she said quietly, "there's nothing I want to see John about and
there's nothing for him to see me about any more. I guess," she smiled
at the gruff old doctor, "you're about the only man I can stand the
sight of or who would put up with me."

"Fanny," Doc Philipps told her, "if you don't buck up and get well, if
you die on my hands, it will be the first mean thing you ever did."

"Oh, well--it would be the last," laughed Fanny.

"Fanny, don't you know that Seth Curtis and nearly all the town comes
here at least once a day? How do you suppose John and Seth and the
rest of us will feel if you just quit and go?"

And then in bitterness of heart Fanny answered.

"Oh, I'm tired of living, of being snubbed and made fun of. I'm past
caring how anybody else will feel. I tell you I'm a misfit. God never
took pains to finish me. I've been a miserable failure, no good to
anybody. My children will be better off without me. John said so."

"My God!" groaned the old doctor, "did John say that?" He knew now
that no medicine that he could give, no skill of his would mend a heart
bruised like that.

"Yes--he said that--and a whole lot more. Said I've eternally
disgraced him and dragged him down and will land him in jail or the
poorhouse. And I guess maybe it's so.