"If you only had let us take you to our house!" cried Josephine, for the
tenth time since she had first proposed that plan. "We could have made
you so much more comfortable."

Sally opened her eyes again. "No, you couldn't, Joey," she said,
"unless you had taken all the rest of them. I couldn't spare my family
another day!"

"May we come in?"

It was Jarvis Burnside, bringing his mother to see Sally. Neither of them
had yet set eyes upon her since her illness. Sally had been at home for
two days now, two intemperately hot days. During this entire period she
had lain on the couch, which was drawn as close to the window as it
could be placed. Uncle Timothy had remained at hand with fans and iced
lemonade and every other expedient he could think of for mitigating the
perfervid temperature of the flat. Just now, at five o'clock in the
afternoon, with no breeze whatever entering at the window, the small
living-room was at its worst.

"Oh, I'm so glad to see you!" Sally held out a languid hand, but her face
lighted up with pleasure.

While his mother bent over Sally, Jarvis pushed up his goggles, then
pulled them off. The room was shaded, but even so, the daylight made him
blink painfully for a minute. But by the time he got his chance at
greeting the invalid, he was able to see clearly for himself just how
Sally was looking. He stared hard at her, noting with a contraction of
the heart all the evidences of the fight for life she had been through.
There was no doubt about it, it was as Josephine had said: she looked as
if a breath might blow her away.

"I look like a little boy now, don't I?" suggested Sally, smiling up at
him as his hand closed over hers. She put up her other hand to her head,
where the heavy masses of fair hair had given way to a short, curly crop
most childish in its clustering framing of her now delicate face. "It's
a blow to my vanity, but it's growing fast, and by the time I can hold my
head up good and strong, like a six-months-old baby, it will be long
enough to tie with a bow at my neck."

"You can't hold your head up yet?" questioned Jarvis anxiously.

"Oh, yes, I can," declared Sally, cheerfully. "I just don't seem to want
to--not when there's a convenient pillow to lay it on. But I shall get
strong pretty soon now. When the weather changes--why, even to-day, if I
were lying down on the bank of a brook somewhere, or in the woods--or
almost anywhere out-doors--I believe I'd feel quite a l