“Oh, I’ve already had the measles,” said Betty, quickly, “two years ago.”

“Then I’m glad that you will not have to suffer for the disobedience of the others,” answered her godmother.  “It has brought its own punishment this time, so I’ll not add a scolding.  I’ll leave the measles, if that’s what it turns out to be, to preach you a sermon on the text, ’Be sure your sin will find you out.’”

Sally Fairfax welcomed no guests from Locust that night at her party, for the doctor made his visit and pronounced his verdict.  No parties for many a long day.  Lloyd and Eugenia and Joyce had the measles, and nobody would want Betty to come for fear of the contagion.

Mrs. Sherman and Eliot and Mom Beck went from one darkened room to another with hot lemonade, and Betty was left to roam about the place by herself.  Once she slipped into the sewing-room where the tissue-paper costumes were laid out in readiness beside the dainty little flower-shaped hats.  Joyce’s was patterned after a pale blue morning-glory, and Eugenia’s a scarlet poppy.  Lloyd’s looked like a pink hyacinth, and Betty’s a daffodil.

“It’s too bad,” mourned Betty, tilting the graceful daffodil blossom of a hat on her brown curls, and admiring it in the mirror. “I haven’t got the measles, and this is so sweet, it’s a pity not to wear it somewhere.”

Late that evening she heard the Little Colonel grumbling:  “Well, this is a house pahty suah enough, I must say!  Heah we are in the house, and heah we’ll stay and miss all the fun.  I don’t like this kind of a house pahty!”

“Nevah mine, honey,” said Mom Beck.  “It’ll not be as bad as you think.  The measles is done broke out on you beautiful—­as thick as hops.”

“But I hate this dahk room,” wailed the Little Colonel, “and it’s so poky and tiahsome, and I am so hot and I ache all ovah—­”

Then Betty heard Mrs. Sherman go into the room, and the fretting ceased as her cool hand stroked the hot little forehead, and her voice began a slumber song.  It was the “White Seal’s Lullaby.”

“’Oh, hush thee my baby, the night is behind us,
And black are the waters that sparkled so green.’”

How often she had read it in her “Jungle Book,” but she had no idea how beautiful it was until she heard it as her godmother was singing it.  There was the slow, restful, swinging motion of the waves in that music; the coolness of the deep green seas.  How quickly it took away the fever and the aching, and left the healing of sleep in its wake!

“’Where billow meets billow, there soft be thy pillow. 
Oh, weary wee flipperling, curl at thy ease! 
The storm shall not wake thee, nor shark overtake thee,
Asleep in the arms of the slow swinging seas.’”

Betty, in her room across the hall, leaned her head against the window-sill and looked out into the darkness.  There were tears in her eyes.  “Oh,” she whispered, with a quivering lip, “if I only had a mother to sing to me like that, I wouldn’t mind having the measles or anything else!”