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Page 57
"But she had had one case," explained Mrs. Sherman, "and we never
dreamed of her having another. Poor little thing! I hope this will be
light. She had a hard time before, so we must make a regular frolic of
this, girls."
"Well, no, madam, at least not for several days," said the doctor,
gravely, "And you must be extremely careful about her eyes. They seem to
be badly affected, and I must warn you that they are really in danger."
They told Betty that afterward, thinking it would stop her crying, when
everything else failed to do so, if she realised how necessary it was
for her not to inflame them with her tears. Usually she was a sensible
little body, obedient to the slightest suggestion, but now she lay
curled up in a disconsolate little heap in bed, sobbing as if her heart
would break.
"Oh, I don't want to have the measles!" she sobbed, catching her breath
in great gasps. "Oh, I don't _want_ to!"
"My dear little girl, don't let it distress you so!" begged Mrs.
Sherman, leaning over and tenderly wiping the flushed little face.
"It will not be any worse for you than for the other girls, and in a few
days when you feel better we are going to have all sorts of sport out of
it. The girls are planning now what they shall do to make up to you for
this disappointment. They feel as if they are to blame for bringing this
illness upon you by their disobedience, and you cannot imagine how bad
it makes them feel to have you take it to heart so bitterly."
But even that failed to stop her tears, and presently Mrs. Sherman went
out into the hall, where the girls were waiting for her.
"There is some reason for all this distress that I am unable to
discover," she said. "Joyce, maybe if you would go in and talk to her
you might find out."
"She must be lots worse than we were," whispered Eugenia to Lloyd, as
the high, shrill voice, so unlike Betty's usual tones, went on
complainingly in the next room.
"Hush!" warned Lloyd. "She's telling Joyce what the matter is." The
words came out to them distinctly. She was speaking with a nervous
quickness as if her fever had almost reached delirium.
"I was trying to dig one of those roads," wailed Betty, in a high,
querulous voice. "One that would last for ever, don't you know? like the
one they built for Tusitala. You _do_ know, don't you?" she insisted,
feverishly, but Joyce had to acknowledge that she had never heard of it,
and Betty cried again, because she felt too nervous and ill to explain.
"There, there! never mind!" said Joyce, soothingly, thinking that
Betty's mind was wandering. "You can tell me all about it when you get
well."
"But I want you to know _now_!" sobbed Betty, with all the unreasoning
impatience of a sick child. "It is all in my 'Good times book.' I cut it
out of an old _Youth's Companion_, just after I came, and the piece is
inside the cover of that little white and gold book in the
writing-desk. Read it, won't you? Then you will understand."
Joyce took the slip of paper to the window, and glanced rapidly along
the lines.
"No, read it aloud!" demanded Betty, fretfully. "I want to hear it, too.
It is such a sweet story, and I read it over every day to help me
remember."
Mrs. Sherman and the girls, sitting outside the door, leaned forward to
listen, as Joyce read aloud the newspaper clipping that Betty counted
among her chief treasures. This is what they heard:
"THE ROAD OF THE LOVING HEART."[1]
"Remembering the great love of his highness, Tusitala, and his
loving care when we were in prison and sore distressed, we have
prepared him an enduring present, this road which we have dug for
ever."
* * * * *
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