"Delia! Delia!" she gulped. "Is she--is she dead?"

A little man with eye-glasses looked up from where he knelt beside the
blue and white skirt.

"I don't believe so, my dear," he said briskly. "Is this your nurse?
See, she's opening her eyes now--speak to her gently."

As he shifted a leather-covered flask from one hand to the other,
Caroline saw a strange face with drawn, purplish lids where she had
always known two merry gray eyes, and tight thin lips she could not
believe Delia's. A nervous fear seized her, and she turned to run away;
but she remembered suddenly how kind Delia had been to her; how that
very morning--it seemed so long ago, now--Delia had helped her with her
stubby braids of hair, and chided Miss Honey for laughing at her
ignorance of the customs of the park. She gathered her courage together
and crouched down by the silent, terrifying figure.

"Hel--hello, Delia!" she began jerkily, wincing as the eyes opened and
stared stupidly at the ring of anxious faces. "How do you feel, Delia?"

"Lean down," said the little man softly, "she wants to say something."

Caroline leaned lower.

"General," Delia muttered, "where's General?"

The little man frowned.

"Do you know what she means?" he asked.

Caroline patted her bruised cheek.

"Of course I do," she said shortly. "That's the baby. Oh," as she
remembered, "where is the General?"

"Here--here's the baby," called some one. "Push over that carriage," and
a woman crowded through the ring with the General, pink and placid under
his parasol.

"Lift him out," said the little man, and as the woman fumbled at the
strap, he picked the baby out neatly and held him down by the girl on
the ground.

"Here's your baby, Delia," he said, with a kind roughness in his voice.
"Safe and sound--not a scratch! Can you sit up and take him?"

And then, while the standing crowd craned their necks, and even the
steady procession, moving in the way the police kept clear for them,
paused a moment to stare, while the little doctor held his breath and
the ambulance came clanging up the street, Delia sat up as straight as
the mounted policeman beside her and held out her arms.

[Illustration: "CAROLINE WALKED AHEAD, HER CHIN WELL UP, HER NOSE
SNIFFING PLEASURABLY THE UNACCUSTOMED ASPHALT"]

"General, oh, General!" she cried, and buried her face in his fat warm
neck.

The men coughed, the women's faces twisted, but the little doctor
watched her intently.

"Move