ire pharmacopeia look silly. Your little
lady has made up her mind that she's not going to get well. Has she
anything on her mind?"

"She--she wanted to paint the Bay of Naples some day," said Sue.

"Paint?--bosh! Has she anything on her mind worth thinking about
twice--a man, for instance?"

"A man?" said Sue, with a jew's-harp twang in her voice. "Is a man
worth--but, no, doctor; there is nothing of the kind."

"Well, it is the weakness, then," said the doctor. "I will do all
that science, so far as it may filter through my efforts, can
accomplish. But whenever my patient begins to count the carriages
in her funeral procession I subtract 50 per cent. from the curative
power of medicines. If you will get her to ask one question about
the new winter styles in cloak sleeves I will promise you a
one-in-five chance for her, instead of one in ten."

After the doctor had gone Sue went into the workroom and cried a
Japanese napkin to a pulp. Then she swaggered into Johnsy's room
with her drawing board, whistling ragtime.

Johnsy lay, scarcely making a ripple under the bedclothes, with her
face toward the window. Sue stopped whistling, thinking she was
asleep.

She arranged her board and began a pen-and-ink drawing to illustrate
a magazine story. Young artists must pave their way to Art by
drawing pictures for magazine stories that young authors write to
pave their way to Literature.

As Sue was sketching a pair of elegant horseshow riding trousers and
a monocle on the figure of the hero, an Idaho cowboy, she heard a
low sound, several times repeated. She went quickly to the bedside.

Johnsy's eyes were open wide. She was looking out the window and
counting--counting backward.

"Twelve," she said, and a little later "eleven;" and then "ten," and
"nine;" and then "eight" and "seven," almost together.

Sue looked solicitously out the window. What was there to count?
There was only a bare, dreary yard to be seen, and the blank side of
the brick house twenty feet away. An old, old ivy vine, gnarled and
decayed at the roots, climbed half way up the brick wall. The cold
breath of autumn had stricken its leaves from the vine until its
skeleton branches clung, almost bare, to the crumbling bricks.

"What is it, dear?" asked Sue.

"Six," said Johnsy, in almost a whisper. "They're falling faster
now. Three days ago there were almost a hundred. It made my head
ache to count them. But now it's easy. There goes another one