th so joyously but
a few short minutes before, they carried him, up two flights of steep
stairs to a tiny room at the back of the hall.

The gas was burning brightly at one side, and something that sent forth
a savory odor was bubbling on a little two-burner gas-stove. Courtland
was hungry, and it struck his nostrils pleasantly as the door swung
open, revealing a tiny table covered with a white cloth, set for two.
There was a window curtained with white, and a red geranium on the sill.

The girl entered ahead of him, sweeping back a bright chintz curtain
that divided the tiny room, and drew forth a child's cot bed. Courtland
gently laid down the little inert figure. The girl was on her knees
beside the child at once, a bottle in her hand. She was dropping a few
drops in a teaspoon and forcing them between the child's lips.

"Will you please get a doctor, quick," she said, in a strained, quiet
voice. "No, I don't know who; I've only been here two weeks. We're
strangers! Bring somebody! anybody! quick!"

Courtland was back in a minute with a weary, seedy-looking doctor who
just fitted the street. All the way he was seeing the beautiful agony of
the girl's face. It was as if her suffering had been his own. Somehow he
could not bear to think what might be coming. The little form had lain
so limply in his arms!

The girl had undressed the child and put him between the sheets. He was
more like a broken lily than ever. The long dark lashes lay still upon
the cheeks.

Courtland stood back in the doorway, looking at the small table set for
two, and pushed to the wall now to make room for the cot. There was just
barely room to walk around between the things. He could almost hear the
echo of that happy, childish voice calling down in the street: "Bonnie!
Bonnie! I've got supper all ready!"

He wondered if the girl had heard. And there was the supper! Two
blue-and-white bowls set daintily on two blue-and-white plates,
obviously for the something-hot that was cooking over the flame, two
bits of bread-and-butter plates to match; two glasses of milk; a plate
of bread, another of butter; and by way of dessert an apple cut in half,
the core dug out and the hollow filled with sugar. He took in the
details tenderly, as if they had been a word-picture by Wells or Shaw in
his contemporary-prose class at college. They seemed to burn themselves
into his memory.

"Go over to my house and ask my wife to give you my battery!" commanded