ctivity obliged her caretakers to be incessantly on the alert.
Miss Merriam, the skilled young woman from the School of Mothercraft,
who had pulled her through her period of greatest feebleness, now found
herself sometimes quite outdone by the energy of her little charge.

The Ethels were always glad to relieve her of her responsibilities for
an hour or two, and it was the afternoon of the day after Roger had
reported his plan to the Club that found the cousins strolling down
Church Street, "Ayleesabet" between them, clinging to a finger of each,
not to help her stand upright but to serve as a pair of supports from
which she might swing herself off the ground.

"See! She lifted her whole weight then!" exclaimed Ethel Blue. "We
shall have to give up calling her 'baby' soon. She's becoming an
acrobat!"

"It's all due to Miss Merriam. I wish she didn't look so tired the
last few days."

Ethel Blue made no reply. She guessed something of the reason that had
made Miss Gertrude appear distressed and silent. A certain note that
she herself had placed in a May basket and hung on Miss Merriam's door
might have something to do with her appearance of anxiety. She changed
the subject as a measure of precaution, for she had been in the
confidence of Dr. Watkins, the elder brother of Tom and Delia and a
warm admirer of Miss Merriam's, and she did not want the conversation
to run into channels where she might have to answer inconvenient
questions.

"This scheme of Roger's is pretty tremendous," she began by way of
introducing a theme in which Ethel Brown would be sure to be interested.

"We--the Club, I mean--never has 'fallen down' yet on anything, even
some of our 'shows' that we didn't have much time to get up, so we
ought to have confidence in ourselves as a Club."

"With this next undertaking, though, we don't really know how the thing
is done."

"How to make over the house, you mean?"

"How to make over the house and how to run the Fresh Air settlement
when the house is made over."

"There's no doubt we'll know more at the end of the summer than we know
now! We've got to get information from every source we can."

"The way Roger has up to now."

"We must think of every one we know who has made over a house, and Dr.
Watkins ought to be able to tell us of some people who have had Fresh
Air children staying with them, so we can get some idea about what they
need and how a house is managed."

"Come, come."