lwynne, did you eat it? Did you eat it even after all the
doctor said to you about your sick headaches?"

"Of course I ate it. How do you expect me to sit hungry in a roomful of
girls all digging into that plateful of brown delicious soft hot fudge
with their little silver spoons, and I not even tasting it? I hated to
make myself conspicuous before the juniors there. They would think I am a
hypochondriac, and Berta Abbott might have said something to make the
others look at me and laugh. I don't believe the stuff hurts me a
particle. Doctors always want you to give up the things you like best."

"Oh, Ethelwynne!" groaned Agnes, "you never deny yourself anything. It is
the only trait I don't like in you. Now you have caught a dreadful cold
just because you could not refuse the candy. You must break it up with
quinine." She fetched a small box from the bureau in her bedroom. "Here,
open your mouth."

The other girl opened her mouth obediently. "I love pills. We're
homeopaths, you know. Once when I was a baby, I got hold of mother's
medicine chest and ate all the pellets. I thought they were candy.
Sweet--oh, delicious! I used to enjoy being sick. And now this nice big
chocolate-coated pill!" She sprang up suddenly, her face twisted into an
expression of agony. "Oh, oh, oh!"

Agnes white as a sheet flew to her side. "What is it? Quick, quick,
Wynnie! Is it your heart? Your head? A darting pain! Where, oh, where?"

"Crackie!" Ethelwynne ruefully rubbed her mouth. "I've been sucking that
pill."

After a moment's struggle to retain her sympathetic gravity, Agnes gave
way and dropping her head on her hands shook alarmingly for at least half
a minute.

"I told you I was a homeopath," expostulated Ethelwynne, "how was I to
know that allopaths always swallow their pills whole?"

"Wh-wh-why did you suppose it was coated with chocolate?" gasped Agnes.

"So as to improve the taste of course and tempt me to eat it. I am fond
of chocolate. If it is my duty to eat a pill, I want it to be inviting. I
don't want to do anything that I don't want to do, specially when I am
sick. Well, anyhow, I shall never touch another."

However, by bedtime Ethelwynne was feeling so miserable that finally
after long urging she consented to swallow another dose of quinine in the
orthodox way. She allowed Agnes to put a hot water bottle at her feet and
to tuck in the coverlets cozily; and then she tried to go to sleep. But
that was another story