and the weak dose of jamaica
ginger and water that she was next offered. She felt encouraged and
refreshed enough by this treatment to display some slight curiosity
when the little girl produced a card of villainous looking
safety-pins.

"I'm going to pin you in with these, Aunt Beulah," she said, "and then
sweat your cold out of you."

"Indeed, you're not," Beulah said; "don't be absurd, Eleanor. The
theory of the grip is--," but she was addressing merely the vanishing
hem of cook's voluminous apron.

The child returned almost instantly with three objects of assorted
sizes that Beulah could not identify. From the outside they looked
like red flannel and from the way Eleanor handled them it was evident
that they also were hot.

"I het--heated the flatirons," Eleanor explained, "the way I do for
Grandma, and I'm going to spread 'em around you, after you're pinned
in the blankets, and you got to lie there till you prespire, and
prespire good."

"I won't do it," Beulah moaned, "I won't do any such thing. Go away,
child."

"I cured Grandma and Grandpa and Mrs. O'Farrel's aunt that I worked
for, and I'm going to cure you," Eleanor said.

"No."

Eleanor advanced on her threateningly.

"Put your arms under those covers," she said, "or I'll dash a glass of
cold water in your face,"--and Beulah obeyed her.

Peter nodded wisely when Beulah, cured by these summary though
obsolete methods, told the story in full detail. Gertrude had laughed
until the invalid had enveloped herself in the last few shreds of her
dignity and ordered her out of the room, and the others had been
scarcely more sympathetic.

"I know that it's funny, Peter," she said, "but you see, I can't help
worrying about it just the same. Of course, as soon as I was up she
was just as respectful and obedient to my slightest wish as she ever
was, but at the time, when she was lording it over me so, she--she
actually slapped me. You never saw such a--blazingly determined little
creature."

Peter smiled,--gently, as was Peter's way when any friend of his made
an appeal to him.

"That's all right, Beulah," he said, "don't you let it disturb you for
an instant. This manifestation had nothing to do with our experiment.
Our experiment is working fine--better than I dreamed it would ever
work. What happened to Eleanor, you know, was simply this. Some of the
conditions of her experience were recreated suddenly, and she
reverted."

CHAPTER VI

JIMMI