."

Lois Henry was deeply flushed now and lay with her eyes half open,
muttering to herself.

"Mother?" he said, but she did not notice him.

He went out to dinner in a thoughtful mood, but he had no appetite.
Primrose was hungry enough, but looked up smilingly now and then. Dr.
Reed came in earlier than his wont and accepted the invitation to dine,
asking questions occasionally as to how Friend Lois had been last week,
and if she had shown any tendency to be flurried.

"She hath not been quite herself, now that I come to recall it,"
answered Rachel, "and complaining of being tired and not sleeping well.
Oh, I hope----" She was about to add, "it will not be with her as it was
with my poor mother," but tears stopped her.

It was a fever sure enough. It would be better to have her in a separate
chamber, and if some old nurse would come in. "There was Mistress
Fanshaw, only come home last week."

"I will go for her," responded Andrew.

"I shall be in on the second day," the doctor announced, as he mounted
his horse and settled his saddlebags.

"A sad thing for all of us." Rachel wiped her eyes with the end of her
stout linen apron.

"I shall take Primrose back to Wetherill farm."

"Oh, that will indeed be a relief. She and Faith, I foresee, would not
get along together, and I could not manage such a froward child."

Andrew made no reply. There was a little more work devolving upon him,
and he deputed the rest of the day's management to Penn.

He had fortified himself with many arguments as to why Primrose should
return to her great aunt, but to his surprise, his father assented at
once. He was much worried about his wife, who had never been ill before.

Primrose was glad with a great delight. She sat under the tree with
Faith and roused the child's envy with accounts of her life in town, and
the time for pleasure.

"But dost thou not sew or knit?"

"Nay, except lacework and hemstitching, but I shall as I grow older.
There is Patty to sew, and as for stockings, I do not know how they
come, for no one knits them, and they are fine and nice, with gay clocks
in them, and oftentimes silken. I like the pretty things. But all
Friends are not so plain. Some come to us with silken petticoats and
such gay, pretty aprons, just like a garden bed."

Faith sighed. And now she wished Primrose might say, there was such
witchery in her words.

Madam Wetherill was much surprised to have Primrose return so soon, but
not