ll surprised, only you mustn't count too much on
it. We must be getting those photographs ready pretty soon."

"I would like one of Patty and me together, I mean Patty Robbins,
this is Patty Otway," and she held out her doll.

"We'll see if that can be arranged."

"How can it when we don't live in the same place?"

"I have a little plan that I cannot tell you yet. If it works out
all right I will let you know."

"Oh, Miss Dorothy, you are always making such lovely plans. What did
I ever do without you? Has the plan anything to do with my going to
visit Patty some time?"

"Maybe it has and maybe it hasn't. But, dear me, we are slowing up
for Greenville. We must not be carried on to the next station. Have
we all the things? Where is the umbrella? Oh, you have it. All
right. I hope Heppy will give us hot cakes for supper, don't you?"
So saying she led the way from the train and in a few minutes they
were making their way up the familiar street which, strange to say,
had not altered in the least since morning, although Marian felt
that she had been away so long something must surely have happened
meanwhile.

_CHAPTER IX_

_A Visit to Patty_

After all it was not so very long before Marian and Patty met again,
for a little cough which developed soon after the trip to town in
course of time grew worse, and in course of time the family doctor
announced that Marian had whooping-cough. Mrs. Otway was aghast. She
had a horror of contagious diseases and kept Marian at a distance.
"She must not go to school," she said to Miss Dorothy, "for the
other children might take it."

This was a great blow to Marian, for it meant not only staying away
from school, but from her schoolmates upon whom she had begun to
depend, so it was a very sorrowful face that she wore all that day,
and time hung heavily upon her hands. She wandered up-stairs and
down, wishing for the hour to come when Miss Dorothy would return.
Finally she went out to the garden, for her grandmother had told
her to keep in the open air as much as possible, and it was still
pleasant in the sunshine. "I don't suppose Dippy and Tippy will
get the whooping-cough if I play with them," she remarked to
Heppy, feeling that if these playmates failed her she would be
desolate indeed.

Heppy laughed. "They're not likely to," she said, "though I have
known plenty of cats to have coughs, and I have known of their
having pneumony, but I guess you can risk it."

S