aid in a great hurry.
"He'll do himself harm. No one can do anything with him. You come and
try, like a good child. He likes you."

"He turned me out of the room this morning," said Mary, stamping her
foot with excitement.

The stamp rather pleased the nurse. The truth was that she had been
afraid she might find Mary crying and hiding her head under the
bed-clothes.

"That's right," she said. "You're in the right humor. You go and
scold him. Give him something new to think of. Do go, child, as quick
as ever you can."

It was not until afterward that Mary realized that the thing had been
funny as well as dreadful--that it was funny that all the grown-up
people were so frightened that they came to a little girl just because
they guessed she was almost as bad as Colin himself.

She flew along the corridor and the nearer she got to the screams the
higher her temper mounted. She felt quite wicked by the time she
reached the door. She slapped it open with her hand and ran across the
room to the four-posted bed.

"You stop!" she almost shouted. "You stop! I hate you! Everybody
hates you! I wish everybody would run out of the house and let you
scream yourself to death! You will scream yourself to death in a
minute, and I wish you would!" A nice sympathetic child could neither
have thought nor said such things, but it just happened that the shock
of hearing them was the best possible thing for this hysterical boy
whom no one had ever dared to restrain or contradict.

He had been lying on his face beating his pillow with his hands and he
actually almost jumped around, he turned so quickly at the sound of the
furious little voice. His face looked dreadful, white and red and
swollen, and he was gasping and choking; but savage little Mary did not
care an atom.

"If you scream another scream," she said, "I'll scream too--and I can
scream louder than you can and I'll frighten you, I'll frighten you!"

He actually had stopped screaming because she had startled him so. The
scream which had been coming almost choked him. The tears were
streaming down his face and he shook all over.

"I can't stop!" he gasped and sobbed. "I can't--I can't!"

"You can!" shouted Mary. "Half that ails you is hysterics and
temper--just hysterics--hysterics--hysterics!" and she stamped each
time she said it.

"I felt the lump--I felt it," choked out Colin. "I knew I should. I
shall have a hunch on my back and then I shall die