a misapprehension. I did not know that the child's
kidneys and spine were affected, and that the family physician had
recommended--"

"Who said the child's spine and kidneys were affected?"

"My love, you intimated it."

"The idea! I never intimated anything of the kind."

"Why, my dear, it hasn't been two minutes since you said--"

"Bother what I said! I don't care what I did say. There isn't any harm
in the child's chewing a bit of pine stick if she wants to, and you know
it perfectly well. And she shall chew it, too. So there, now!"

"Say no more, my dear. I now see the force of your reasoning, and I will
go and order two or three cords of the best pine wood to-day. No child
of mine shall want while I--"

"Oh, please go along to your office and let me have some peace. A body
can never make the simplest remark but you must take it up and go to
arguing and arguing and arguing till you don't know what you are talking
about, and you never do."

"Very well, it shall be as you say. But there is a want of logic in your
last remark which--"

However, she was gone with a flourish before I could finish, and had
taken the child with her. That night at dinner she confronted me with a
face a white as a sheet:

"Oh, Mortimer, there's another! Little Georgi Gordon is taken."

"Membranous croup?"

"Membranous croup."

"Is there any hope for him?"

"None in the wide world. Oh, what is to be come of us!"

By and by a nurse brought in our Penelope to say good night and offer the
customary prayer at the mother's knee. In the midst of "Now I lay me
down to sleep," she gave a slight cough! My wife fell back like one
stricken with death. But the next moment she was up and brimming with
the activities which terror inspires.

She commanded that the child's crib be removed from the nursery to our
bedroom; and she went along to see the order executed. She took me with
her, of course. We got matters arranged with speed. A cot-bed was put
up in my wife's dressing room for the nurse. But now Mrs. McWilliams
said we were too far away from the other baby, and what if he were to
have the symptoms in the night--and she blanched again, poor thing.

We then restored the crib and the nurse to the nursery and put up a bed
for ourselves in a room adjoining.

Presently, however, Mrs. McWilliams said suppose the baby should catch it
from Penelope? This thought struck a new panic to her heart, and the
tribe of us