Henry thinks I'm all tired out, and ought to get away from the children and housekeeping for a little while. He says now that you're here I can go just as well as not. I don't know but that I do need a little change. You're such a lamb, Lu! The children are perfectly willing to have us go anywhere if only Aunt Cretia will come and stay with them. We leave at five this afternoon."
So it really wasn't after all a very propitious morning to be sick in bed. Lucretia put all thought of a fever straight out of her mind. Naturally, if Beatrice and Henry were going to New York for two weeks she couldn't be packed away under down comforters in the sewing-room. Anyhow, probably she'd feel all right after a cup of hot coffee.
Beatrice and Henry left the house at four that afternoon. At eleven the same night, Lucretia was awakened by a noise, like the bark of a dog, issuing from the nursery. It was Bobbie with the croup. She recognized the sound fast enough, once she had shaken herself awake. It was no time for her to have even a cold! So when she came down-stairs the next afternoon to meet Thomas Hornby, she was feeling quite herself again.
He had telephoned to see if she would be at home, and had suggested that she come out in his
