ful as we are apt to think."

"I've done enough tenement house work to know that the babies certainly
survive extraordinary treatment, but these babies here are so delicate
that they ought to have the most careful diet. Most of them need real
nursing."

"Do you think your talks are making any impressions on the mothers?"

"Sometimes Mrs. Schuler and I think so, and just then it almost always
happens that one of them does something totally unexpected that gives
our hopes a terrible blow."

"Let's trust that this is a good day; I'd rather talk to you than work
over a case this fine afternoon."

Gertrude smiled at his tone and they walked on in silence out of the
wood and across the brook and down the lane that brought them to the
back of Rose House where the Club boys and girls were busy making a
piece of furniture of some sort. Mrs. Schuler was talking to Moya in
the kitchen.

"I've brought Dr. Watkins to see everybody," announced Miss Merriam
gayly. "Where are they all?"

"The ones who are at home are up in the pine grove, but Moya has just
told me that Mrs. Paterno and her older boy and Mrs. Tsanoff and one of
the twins have gone to town."

"Walked?"

"Walked by the road on this scorching day!"

Miss Merriam turned to the doctor.

"This is one of the unexpected events we were just talking about.
Little Paterno is four and too large for that little woman to carry,
and far too small and weak to take that long walk on his own legs even
on a more suitable day than this, and the Tsanoff twins are just
holding on to life by the tips of their fingers!"

She sat down in despair. Dr. Watkins looked serious.

"Is there any way of heading them off or bringing them back. Can we
reach them anywhere by telephone?"

"No one knows where they can have gone. It seems it must have been
about an hour and a half ago that they started and I should think
they'd be back before long if they're able to come back--"

"--under their own steam!" finished the doctor with a doubtful smile.

"Let's go to the grove and see the women and children there and perhaps
the others will be in sight by the time you've finished your
examination."

They turned toward the pines whose thick needles cast a heavy shade
upon the ground and gave forth a delicious fragrance under the rays of
the sun. As they disappeared Mrs. Schuler went out on the platform
where the carpentering operations were going on.

"I'm so disturbed about those w