's mind, for Elsie went
briskly toward the nursery, and an absolute silence ensued.

Sally went listlessly to the window, where her eye was immediately
caught by a long pruning ladder, leaning against the house a dozen feet
away. Alma, the little waitress, quietly mixing a mayonnaise on the
kitchen porch, was pressed into service, and five minutes later Sally's
suit-case was cautiously lowered, on the end of a Mexican lariat, and
Sally was steadying the top of the ladder against her window-sill. Alma
was convulsed with innocent mirth, but her big, hard hands were
effective in steadying the lower end of the ladder.

Sally, who was desperately afraid of ladders, packed her thin skirts
tightly about her, gave a fearful glance below, and began a nervous
descent. At every alternate rung she paused, unwound her skirts, shut
her eyes, and breathed hard.

"PLEASE don't shake it so!" she said.

"Aye dadden't!" said Alma, merrily.

The ladder slipped an inch, settling a little lower. Sally uttered a
smothered scream. She dared not move her eyes from the rung immediately
in front of them. Her face was flushed, her hair had slipped back from
her damp temples. It seemed to her as if she must already have climbed
down several times the length of the ladder. At every step she had to
kick her skirts free.

"Permit me!" said a kind voice in the world of reeling brick walks and
dwarfed gooseberry bushes below her.

Sally, with a thump at her heart, looked down to see Dr. Bates lay a
firm hand upon the rocking ladder.

Speechless, she finished the descent, reeling a little unsteadily
against the doctor's shoulder as she faced about on the walk. Her face
was crimson. To climb down a ladder, with him looking pleasantly up
from below, and then to fall into his very arms! Sally shook out her
skirts like a furious hen, and walked, with one chilly inclination of
the head for acknowledgment of his courtesy, toward the waiting motor.

"Ferdie has promised Bill Bevis that you will spin me over in the
motor," said the doctor, a little timidly, when they reached it.

Sally eyed him stonily.

"Ferd--"

"Why, I had promised Bevis that I would look in to-day," pursued the
doctor, uncomfortably; "and when they telephoned about it, a few
minutes ago, one of the maids said that she believed that you were
going right over, and would bring me."

"I have changed my mind," said Sally. "Perhaps you will drive yourself
over?"

"I don't know a