“I nevah was so mizzible in all my life,” said Lloyd.  “My throat is soah and my eyes ache, and I can’t help cryin’ if anybody looks at me.”

“That’s just the way I feel,” said Eugenia, still dabbing her eyes with her handkerchief, “and my head aches, besides.”

“I think we are all three taking bad colds,” said Joyce, from her hammock.  “I haven’t reached the crying stage yet, but I’m fast on the way toward it.  Betty will be the only one able to go to the party to-night, and our tissue-paper dresses are so pretty.”

Mrs. Sherman looked from one flushed face to another with a puzzled expression.  “I don’t know what to think,” she said, “but if I were not sure that you have been no place where you possibly could have been exposed, I should be afraid that you are all taking the measles.  Doctor Fuller told me the other day that there are several children in the gypsy camp down with it, and one poor little baby had died.  It didn’t have proper attention.  Why, what is the matter, girls?” Mrs. Sherman paused, having seen a startled glance pass from Lloyd to Eugenia.

“Surely you haven’t been near any of those people, have you?  Passed them on the road, or met them at the station at any time?”

There was a long pause in which nobody answered, and in which Betty could hear her heart beat fast.

“Lloyd, answer me,” insisted Mrs. Sherman.

“Eu-Eugenia won’t l-let me!” sobbed the Little Colonel.  “She made us all p-promise not to tell.”

Eugenia’s face turned pale, but she lifted her head defiantly as Mrs. Sherman turned to her, calling her name.

“What is the trouble, child?  You surely didn’t go to the camp that morning when I warned you not to?”

“Yes, we did,” answered Eugenia, a little frightened now by the expression of Mrs. Sherman’s face, but still defiant.

“When was it?”

“About a week ago, I think.  I don’t remember exactly.”

“It’s been nine days,” said Betty, counting her fingers.  “I remember it because it was the day before the picnic at the old mill.”

“And there was a sick baby in the tent when we went in to have our fortunes told,” added Joyce.  “It lay in the old woman’s lap all the time she held my hand, and it kept turning its head from side to side, and fretting in a weak little voice as if it didn’t have strength to cry hard.  That must have been the poor little thing that died.”

“And you all went into that tent and all let that old woman hold your hands?” asked Mrs. Sherman, looking around from one to another with a distressed face.

“No, mothah,” cried the Little Colonel, “Betty didn’t go, and she tried to keep us from goin’.  She said you wouldn’t like it.”

A loving smile of unspoken approval, that made Betty’s heart glow with pleasure, lighted Mrs. Sherman’s face for an instant.  Then she turned to the others.

“Well, I’ll send for Doctor Fuller immediately.  If it proves to be the measles, we will turn the house into a hospital at once.  If the old saying is true that misery loves company, then you ought to be a contented quartette.”