rrying to and fro, paused to expostulate.

"Not so close, Miss Susie, please--the child can't breathe; and I don't
want you putting any of your naughtiness into his head."

"How can I, when he can't walk?" said Susie indignantly.

"Well, I wouldn't put it beyond you," said nurse. "I know you've been up
to something, or you wouldn't be here now, looking as if butter wouldn't
melt in your mouth."

"I'm trying to be good," said Susie, still indignant.

"Well, we shan't see the result yet awhile," said nurse, "for the way
you've devil-oped these holidays is past imagining."

She always pronounced it in that way, and the word held a dreary
significance for Susie.

CHAPTER IV.

That horrid, teasing cough of Dick's got worse and worse, and by evening
he was lying patiently in his crib, with a steaming kettle singing into
the little tent of blankets that enveloped it, and a very large and very
hot linseed poultice on his chest. Susie, sitting down below, could hear
the hasty footsteps and the hoarse, croaking sound that always filled her
with panic. Their tea was brought to them by the overworked maid, and she
and Tom ate it in a depressed silence, and then sat again on the
window-sill looking silently and miserably out to sea. By-and-by nurse
came in hurriedly, with the news that baby was crying and had to be
attended to, and that she and Tom must manage to put themselves to bed.

"I haven't time to brush your hair," nurse said regretfully; and Susie's
face lightened.

"Nurse, is Dick better?" she asked breathlessly.

"He's about as bad as I've ever seen him," nurse said shortly, and turned
to leave the room; but Susie clung desperately to her skirt.

"Don't go, nurse. Let me do something--let me hold baby."

"No, indeed, Miss Susie," said nurse; "you've done mischief enough
already. Go to bed quietly, and try to get up right foot foremost
to-morrow."

Susie went back to the window-sill, and huddled up close to Tom. With
blank eyes she looked at the stars and the moon bursting from behind
hurrying clouds. Even when she put her fingers into her ears that rasping
cough pursued her. Tom's heavy head fell against her, and she knew he
ought to be in bed; but it wanted really desperate courage to shake him
into consciousness and get him up somehow to his room.

And upstairs, next to Tom's little bed, was an empty space, from which a
crib had been hastily wheeled into the next room. On the floor beside it
la