At the end of half an hour the boys came back to the porch, all three delightfully and completely dirty, and clamouring that they were hungry.  The English tyrant not appearing, I took them into the house and, after a washing of hands and faces, gave the boys the usual eleven o’clock lunch of milk and simple cookies to take out in the sun to eat.  As they were thus engaged the tyrant appeared on the horizon, horror written in every feature, and a volley of correction evidently taking shape on her lips, while an ugly look of cowed defiance spread itself over the child’s face as he caught sight of her.

There was no scene, however.  Father said in the most offhand way, as if being obeyed was a matter of course, “Go back and tell your mistress that I am carrying out her request, and that after luncheon I will send the boy safely home, with a written message.”

“But his medicines, his hour’s rest alone in the dark, his special food,—­the medical man in New York said—­” protested the woman, completely taken aback.

“You heard my message?” said father, cheerfully, and that was all.

“What are you going to advise?” I asked, as in the middle of the afternoon father came from his office, where he had given the lad a thorough inspection.

“Simply to turn him loose in light woollen clothes, give him companions of his age, and let him alone.”

“Can’t you word it differently?” I asked.

“Why, is not that fairly direct?” he replied, looking surprised; “and surely the direct method is almost always the best.”

“I think this is the one case where it is not, dear old Daddy.  In fact, if you are destined, as I see that you are, to pick up and tie the threads of ravelled health in the Bluff Colony, you will have to become more complicated, at least in speech, accustomed as they are to a series of specialists, and having importance attached to the very key in which a sneeze is pitched.

“Those few words would savour to the Whirlpoolers of lack of proper respect and consideration.  You must give a name to both ailment and cure if you expect to be obeyed.  Call the case a ’serious one of physical suppression,’ and the remedy the ‘fresh earth cure,’ to be taken only in light woollen clothes, tell them to report progress to you every other day, and you gain the boy his liberty.”

Father laughed heartily, and his nose twitched in a curious way it has when he is secretly amused and convinced against his will; but I think he took my advice, at least in part, for the next morning Papa Vanderveer drove down in the brake, announcing in a shout that “De Peyster slept all night without waking up and crying, for the first time in months,” adding, “And, Dr. Russell, if you’ve got anything further in this liberty line to suggest, even to getting rid of the Duchess, now’s your time.  ‘The Duchess?’ Ah, she is that confounded head nurse woman that Maria will keep so that things may be done properly, until the poor kid’s nearly been done for, I say.  The Ponsonbys are crazy to get the woman to break in their youngest girl and keep her down and from growing up until they marry the others off; so Maria could part with her in the light of a favour to them, don’t you see, without spilling blood.  Peysey’ll have to have some sort of a chaser, though, or Maria’ll not hear of it.”