"Please, Matty," said Nelly, before she set out, "see that poor Dick
wants nothing during my absence. Perhaps you would sit beside him. But,
pray, say nothing to him that can possibly vex or excite him; you know
that he is still very weak, and the fever might possibly return."

Matty agreed to play the nurse for an hour, and with a slow and
lingering step she accordingly went to the cottage in which her brother
was staying.

It was sad to see the young, bright, active boy placed like an aged man
in an arm-chair, his cheek, so lately glowing with health, almost as
pale as the pillow upon which it was resting. Dick's eye was, however,
still bright, and he had his old playfulness of manner, though his tone
was more feeble than usual, as he exclaimed, on the entrance of his
sister, "Why, Matty, you and I look for all the world as if we had been
in the wars! I with this bandage across my brow, you with your hair
cropped close, and your eyebrows all singed off; you can't think how
funny you look!"

Poor Matty hid her face with her hands, and was ready to burst into
tears.

"Oh, don't take it to heart!" cried Dick; "hair will soon grow again,
you know. I wonder that your friend Miss Folly has not helped you to an
elegant wig."

"She is no friend of mine!" exclaimed Matty, with vehemence. "Do you not
know that it was Folly who caused the explosion? She thought, like an
idiot as she is, that it would be fun to put a match to the fireworks
when all our backs were turned, and make us start with surprise. It was
her meddling that caused all this mischief and misery;" and again poor
disfigured Matty hid her face in her hands.

"Then I hope that you'll cut her from this day forth," observed Dick.

"She has cut us," replied Matty, quickly. "Have you not heard how her
flounces were all in a blaze, and how she rushed about as if mad, into a
cottage and out again, till Nelly and Lubin knocked her down just in
time to save her from being quite burned?"

"I have heard nothing," said Dick, raising himself on his chair, with an
expression of curiosity and interest; "you know that Nelly has been my
nurse, and she would hardly speak a word for fear lest she should put me
into a fever."

Matty was eager to impart all her knowledge, quite regardless of Nelly's
parting warning, and began to talk so fast that Dick could not help
being reminded of poor Miss Folly.

"Well, you shall hear everything now. Folly was knocked down, or pull