urse came in. She was not laughing now by any means. She
even looked rather pale.

"He's worked himself into hysterics," she said in a great hurry. "He'll
do himself harm. No one can do anything with him. You come and try,
like a good child. He likes you."

"He turned me out of the room this morning," said Mary, stamping her
foot with excitement.

The stamp rather pleased the nurse. The truth was that she had been
afraid she might find Mary crying and hiding her head under the
bed-clothes.

"That's right," she said. "You're in the right humor. You go and scold
him. Give him something new to think of. Do go, child, as quick as ever
you can."

It was not until afterward that Mary realized that the thing had been
funny as well as dreadful--that it was funny that all the grown-up
people were so frightened that they came to a little girl just because
they guessed she was almost as bad as Colin himself.

She flew along the corridor and the nearer she got to the screams the
higher her temper mounted. She felt quite wicked by the time she reached
the door. She slapped it open with her hand and ran across the room to
the four-posted bed.

"You stop!" she almost shouted. "You stop! I hate you! Everybody hates
you! I wish everybody would run out of the house and let you scream
yourself to death! You _will_ scream yourself to death in a minute, and
I wish you would!"

A nice sympathetic child could neither have thought nor said such
things, but it just happened that the shock of hearing them was the best
possible thing for this hysterical boy whom no one had ever dared to
restrain or contradict.

He had been lying on his face beating his pillow with his hands and he
actually almost jumped around, he turned so quickly at the sound of the
furious little voice. His face looked dreadful, white and red and
swollen, and he was gasping and choking; but savage little Mary did not
care an atom.

"If you scream another scream," she said, "I'll scream too--and I can
scream louder than you can and I'll frighten you, I'll frighten you!"

He actually had stopped screaming because she had startled him so. The
scream which had been coming almost choked him. The tears were streaming
down his face and he shook all over.

"I can't stop!" he gasped and sobbed. "I can't--I can't!"

"You can!" shouted Mary. "Half that ails you is hysterics and
temper--just hysterics--hysterics--hysterics!" and she stamped each time
she said it.

"I f