"Almost?" interrupted Billy. "Fortunate girl!"

"I hope I may see her," asked Dic, timidly.

"No, you can't," replied Mrs. Bays with firmness. "She's in bed, and I
_hardly_ think it would be the proper thing."

"Dic!" called a weak little voice from the box stairway leading from the
room above. "Dic!" And that young man sprang to the stairway door with
evident intent to mount. Mrs. Bays hurried after him, crying:--

"You shall not go up there. She's in bed, I tell you. You can't see
her."

Billy rose to his feet and stood behind her. When Dic stopped, at the
command of Mrs. Bays, Billy made an impatient gesture and pointed to the
room above, emphasizing the movement with a look that plainly said, "Go
on, you fool," and Dic went.

Mrs. Bays turned quickly upon Billy, but his pale countenance was as
expressionless as usual, and he was examining his finger tips with such
care one might have supposed them to be rare natural curiosities.

"Ah, Dic," cried the same little voice from the bed, when that young man
entered the room, and two white arms, from which the sleeves had fallen
back, were held out to him as the pearly gates might open to a wandering
soul.

Dic knelt by the bedside, and the white arms entwined themselves about
his neck. He spoke to her rapturously, and placed his cool cheek
against her feverish face. Then the room grew dark to the girl, her eyes
closed, and she fainted.

Dic thought she was dead, and in an agony of alarm placed his ear to her
heart, hoping to hear its beating. No human motive could have been purer
than Dic's. Of that fact I know you are sure, else I have written of him
in vain; but when Mrs. Bays entered the room and saw him, she was
pleased to cry out:--

"Help! help! he has insulted my daughter."

Billy mounted the stairway in three jumps, a feat he had not performed
in twenty years, and when he entered the room Mrs. Bays pointed
majestically to the man kneeling by Rita's bed.

"Take that man from my house, Mr. Little," cried Mrs. Bays in a
sepulchral, judicial tone of voice. "He broke into her room and insulted
my sick daughter when she was unconscious."

Dic remained upon his knees by the bedside, and did not fully grasp the
meaning of his accuser's words. Billy stepped to Rita's side, and taking
her unresisting hand hastily sought her pulse. Then he spoke gruffly to
Mrs. Bays, who had wrought herself into a spasm of injured virtue.

"She has fainted," cried Billy. "F