d very zealously, and passed him
everything she thought he could want. It was not until she had done all
that that the silence and the emptiness of the table struck her.
"Why, where is Dan?" she cried.

"And where is Anthony?" asked Anthony's father.

Betty gave a little jump, but as quickly controlled herself again. "Oh,
I'd quite forgotten about him," she said calmly. "Tony is in bed."

"In bed?" cried Dr. Trenire and Kitty at the same moment. "Isn't he
well?"

None of them had ever been sent to bed for being naughty, so that
illness was the only explanation that occurred to them.

"Oh yes, he is all right; but I made him get under the feather-bed
because of the lightning--"

"The what?"

"The lightning. They say it can't strike you if you are covered with
feathers, and of course I didn't want it to strike Tony, speshally with
nobody here but me to--to take the 'sponsibility," looking at her father
with the most serious face imaginable. "So I made him get into the
spare-room bed, 'cause it's a feather-bed, and then I put all the
eider-downs over him, and I expect he's as safe as can be."

Dr. Trenire gave a low whistle and started to his feet.
"Very thoughtful of you, child," he said, trying not to smile, "and I
expect Tony is safe enough, if he isn't cooked or suffocated. For my
part, I should prefer the risk to such a protection in this weather.
I'll go and rescue him." But Kitty had already flown.

"I forgot to tell Kitty," went on Betty thoughtfully, "that I think the
moths have got into the eider-downs, such a lot of them flew out when I
moved the quilts."

Dr. Trenire groaned. "I suppose the quilts have never been attended to
or put away since we ceased to use them?"

"No," said Betty gravely. "You see, if they are on the spare-room bed
they are all out in readiness for when we want them."

"And for the moths when they want them," sighed her father. "I expect
they will not leave much for us."

Kitty, her father's half-jesting words filling her with a deep alarm,
had meanwhile raced up to the spare room. Somehow, on this dreadful
day, anything seemed possible, certainly anything that was terrible, and
she remembered suddenly that the spare bedroom was the very hottest room
in the house. It was over the kitchen, and caught every possible gleam
of sunshine from morning till evening. Also she knew Betty's
thoroughness only too well, and her mind's eye saw poor little Tony
buried deep a