breathing keep on, and knew that he was still asleep. He did not rouse, more than to open bloodshot, unseeing eyes and close them again when she loudly stirred his medicine in the glass and held the spoon to his lips. As before, he obediently opened his mouth and swallowed, and went on sleeping.

She stood a moment anxiously watching him. She did not know just what she ought to do. Perhaps he was going to have pneumonia! Perhaps she ought to send for the doctor, and yet there[83] were complications about that. She would be obliged to explain a lot—or else lie to the neighborhood! And he might not like it for her to call a doctor while he was asleep. If she only had some one with whom to advise! On ordinary questions she always consulted Mary Amber, but by the very nature of the case Mary Amber was out of this. Besides, in half an hour Mary Amber very discreetly put herself beyond a question outside of any touch with Miss Marilla’s visitor by taking herself off in her little runabout for a short visit to a college friend over in the next county. It was plain that Mary Amber did not care to subject herself to further contact with the young soldier. He might be Dick or he might not be Dick. It was none of her business while she was visiting Jeannette Clark; so she went away quite hurriedly. Miss Marilla heard the purr of the[84] engine as the little brown car started down the hedged driveway, and watched the flight with a sense of satisfaction. She had an intuition that Mary Amber was not in favor of her soldier, and she had a guilty sense of hiding the truth from her dear young friend that made her breathe more freely as she watched Mary Amber’s flight. Moreover, it was with a certain self-reproachful relief that she noted the little brown suitcase that lay at Mary Amber’s feet as she slid past Miss Marilla’s house without looking up. Mary Amber was going away for the day at least, probably overnight; and by that time the question of the soldier would be settled one way or the other without Mary Amber’s having to worry about it.

[83]

[84]

Miss Marilla ordered a piece of beef, and brewed a cup of the most delicious beef-tea, which she took up-stairs. She[85] managed to get her soldier awake enough to swallow it; but it was plain that he did not in the least realize where he was, and seemed well content to close his eyes and drowse away once more. Miss Marilla was deeply troubled. Some pricks from the old, time-worn adage beginning, “O what a tangled web we weave,” began to stab her conscience. If only she had not allowed those paragraphs to go into the county 

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