he winter,
crawled up on the lounge ready for play. Even their antics tired Beth.
When the doctor came, he looked serious over the child's condition.

"She must be put to bed immediately," was his first order.

"I'll have her carried up-stairs," said Mrs. Davenport.

The doctor was a very blunt man and declared plainly:

"She's too sick to be moved. Have a bed brought in here if you can."

Without arguing the question, Mrs. Davenport ordered the servants to
bring down an iron cot. Her commands were carried out quietly and with
haste, and soon Beth was undressed and in bed. She was delirious by
this time, and did not even note that a doctor was present.

He studied the case silently for a few minutes. He was a well-meaning
man, but a doctor of the old school. He believed that if medicine was
a good thing, the more one took the better. Also, if dieting was good,
semi-starvation was better.

He therefore wrote out five or six prescriptions, all of very strong
drugs. He also ordered that she should be fed only on gruels.

Duke seemed to grieve over Beth's illness extremely. He would not play
with the puppies, and would eat hardly anything. At first, he walked
into the room where Beth was and lay down beside her cot. When he saw
he was in the way there, he took up his position on the piazza outside
the door, and could hardly be induced to move. Even white dog failed
to entice him away.

Anxious times followed for the Davenports. The fear of losing Beth
made each member of the family realize, as never before, how very dear
the little, mischievous child was to them. She was mischievous no
longer, however. She was so patient that Mrs. Davenport feared more
than ever that she would die. Often Beth would smile so beatifically
that her mother thought she must be thinking of angels and heaven.

"Dearie, of what are you thinking?" she once asked.

Beth's face was illumined with a more heavenly light than ever as she
drew a long breath and answered:

"Oh mamma, I was thinking how good some Bologna sausage, or anything
besides horrid old gruel, would taste."

The truth of the matter was that the child was half-starved. Still the
doctor insisted that she should have nothing but mutton or rice gruel,
and those only in very small quantities. Under such treatment she
wasted to a mere shadow of her former chubby self.

She proved a tyrant in one respect, in that she would have no one but
her mother to watc