u'll have to be strapped to the bed so tightly that you can't move
either arm. How would you like that?"

"I'd break loose somehow! you shan't strap me down!" Dotty's eyes
blazed and her black curls bobbed as she shook her head angrily at the
doctor.

But Dr. Milton paid little heed to her words. He redressed her arm and
then said in his firm yet pleasant way: "I don't know you very well,
Miss Dotty, but I perceive you have a strong will of your own. Now are
you going to use it rightly to help yourself get well, or wrongly to
make all the trouble possible for yourself and every one else?"

Dotty looked at him. She was not accustomed to this kind of talk, for
her parents were inclined to be over indulgent with her tantrums and her
temper.

"I do want to get well as soon as I can," she said, "and I will try to
be good,--but you don't know how it hurts."

"Yes, I do know," and the good doctor smiled down at her; "I know it
hurts like fury! like the very dickens and all! and I know it's just all
you can do to bear it. But if you can get through to-night, I'll promise
you it'll feel better to-morrow."

He went away and Dotty did try to be as good as she could, but the awful
twinges of pain frequently made her forget her resolutions and to
herself and the whole household it seemed as if the night would never
end.

CHAPTER VII

TWO BIG BROTHERS

"Whoop-oo! Whoop-ee! Hoo-ray!! Where are you? Hey! Hi!!"

With half a dozen steps, Bob Rose ran up the staircase of his new home
in Berwick, to Dotty's room.

As he had been at school when the family moved he had never seen the
house before, and now, the school term over, he had come home for
vacation and his first thought was for his broken-armed sister.

It was two weeks since the accident, but Dotty was still in bed. Her arm
was doing nicely, but she was such a nervous and excitable child that it
was thought best to keep her as quiet as possible. She was sitting up in
a nest of pillows and a rose coloured kimono was draped round her
bound-up arm. But she waved the other hand gaily as Bob dashed into the
room.

"Well, old girl," he cried, "this is the limit! The idea of your
smashing yourself like this! Here I've played every old kind of ball and
everything else and never broke one of my two hundred and eight blessed
bones! And you just go out on lady-like roller skates and come a
cropper. Fie upon you! does it hurt much?"

"You bet it hurts, Bob! Nothing l