2]

His tone, to our over-anxious ears, had suggested a fear that he was about to break the news that our precious boy was doomed to an early grave, and it was a relief to see him not only smile, but look as if he would enjoy a hearty laugh. "Don't be alarmed, Mrs. Carton," he said cheerily. "He's a delicate little fellow, but spry as a cricket and quite sound. Send him to the country for six months,—and—ha ha!—don't coddle him so much."

Send our little Paul to the country! Even in her half-allayed anxiety Marion smiled at the idea. Paul, who had never been away from her tender care for one hour, who had howled with dismay when he gathered from[Pg 3] our unguarded conversation that when little boys went to school they didn't take their parents too! Now Paul, up to this time, fortunately for our peace of mind, had been spared the ordinary illnesses and accidents of childhood; indeed, so carefully had he been guarded, that at the age of six he had never tasted unboiled water, unsterilized milk or unhygienic bread, and although he had learned to walk upstairs by himself, had never descended alone except when an anxious parent stood breathlessly at the foot of the stairs ready to break a possible fall. An ordinary child might have rebelled or evaded our watchfulness, but Paul was not an ordinary child, and he was preternaturally anxious to avoid danger and keep us up to the mark. His active little mind ferreted out supposititious disasters with alarming realism until our nerves were unstrung by the constant effort to guard against the possible calamities that he suggested.

[Pg 3]

Send Paul to the country? Send him—to the country! A likely thing, indeed!—and leave us to be tortured by mental visions of his dear little incapable feet projecting[Pg 4] out of a water barrel or being mowed off by an overgrown lawn-mower, his helpless form impaled upon the horns of a bull or dangling from the mouth of a vicious horse.

[Pg 4]

That evening, after Paul was safely asleep, we talked the whole matter over. We had previously toyed with nebulous schemes of living in the country, but the doctor's opinion transformed what had seemed an impracticable but entrancingly delightful castle-in-the-air to a definite consideration of how we could make it an actuality. As Marion said, it was our plain duty to do what was best for Paul, even if we had to sacrifice a few extraneous luxuries in carrying it out, and when she used the word duty I knew that, come what would, we were going to live in the 

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