e
you only ill and nervous?"

"I nevah was so mizzible in all my life," said Lloyd. "My throat is soah
and my eyes ache, and I can't help cryin' if anybody looks at me."

"That's just the way I feel," said Eugenia, still dabbing her eyes with
her handkerchief, "and my head aches, besides."

"I think we are all three taking bad colds," said Joyce, from her
hammock. "I haven't reached the crying stage yet, but I'm fast on the
way toward it. Betty will be the only one able to go to the party
to-night, and our tissue-paper dresses are _so_ pretty."

Mrs. Sherman looked from one flushed face to another with a puzzled
expression. "I don't know what to think," she said, "but if I were not
sure that you have been no place where you possibly could have been
exposed, I should be afraid that you are all taking the measles. Doctor
Fuller told me the other day that there are several children in the
gypsy camp down with it, and one poor little baby had died. It didn't
have proper attention. Why, what is the matter, girls?" Mrs. Sherman
paused, having seen a startled glance pass from Lloyd to Eugenia.

"Surely you haven't been near any of those people, have you? Passed them
on the road, or met them at the station at any time?"

There was a long pause in which nobody answered, and in which Betty
could hear her heart beat fast.

"Lloyd, answer me," insisted Mrs. Sherman.

"Eu-Eugenia won't l-let me!" sobbed the Little Colonel. "She made us all
p-promise not to tell."

Eugenia's face turned pale, but she lifted her head defiantly as Mrs.
Sherman turned to her, calling her name.

"What is the trouble, child? You surely didn't go to the camp that
morning when I warned you not to?"

"Yes, we did," answered Eugenia, a little frightened now by the
expression of Mrs. Sherman's face, but still defiant.

"When was it?"

"About a week ago, I think. I don't remember exactly."

"It's been nine days," said Betty, counting her fingers. "I remember it
because it was the day before the picnic at the old mill."

"And there was a sick baby in the tent when we went in to have our
fortunes told," added Joyce. "It lay in the old woman's lap all the time
she held my hand, and it kept turning its head from side to side, and
fretting in a weak little voice as if it didn't have strength to cry
hard. That must have been the poor little thing that died."

"And you all went into that tent and all let that old woman hold your
hands?" asked Mrs.