“I dreamed that I was in a great market-place going from stall to stall, trying to buy something, but I had forgotten what it was I wanted.  A horrid grinning little dwarf, with great fangs in his jaw, like a boar’s tusks, followed me everywhere, carrying my purse.  I’d stand awhile in front of every stall, trying to remember what it was I’d come for, and when I’d thought awhile I’d cry out, ’Now I know what I want, give me my own way.  It is my own way that I want.’  Everybody in the market would stop to listen, and the man behind the counter would say, ’Not unless you can pay the price.’

“Then that horrible dwarf would step up, grinning, his old tusks showing all hideous and yellow, and say, ’Here is the price!  Give her her own way.  Here is the price.  Let the whole world see the price that she has paid for her own way,—­Betty’s eyes is the price.  Betty’s beautiful brown eyes!’ And then he would hold them out in his ugly knotted hand, and they would look up at me so reproachfully, that I would scream and tear my hair.  I don’t know how many times I had to go through that scene in my sleep, but when I got up this morning I was as tired as if I had been running all night, and every place I turn I can see that hideous old hand thrust out at me with Betty’s brown eyes in it.  I’ll never insist on having my own way again.”

There was no time for Mrs. Sherman to comfort Eugenia then, for Betty needed her, and in answer to the nurse’s summons she hurried away to soothe the child, sorely distressed by this turn that the house party had taken.

“Go out on the ponies for awhile,” she said, as she left the three girls sitting disconsolately on the floor.  “Go out and get some of this summer sunshine into your faces and voices so that you can bring it back to Elizabeth.  She will need all that you can bring her, poor child; so, instead of brooding over your own feelings, think of something that you can do to cheer her up.”

In a little while there was a clatter of ponies’ hoofs down the avenue, and Mrs. Sherman, sitting by the window in Betty’s room, waved her hand to Eugenia, Joyce, and the Little Colonel as they rode away.  They were gone all morning, and when they came back the June sunshine had done its work.  Their faces were bright and smiling, and they giggled continuously as they bumped into each other, running up the stairs.

Betty’s door was open, and to their surprise they heard a little laugh as they stopped to peep in.  She was lying back among the pillows with bandaged eyes, but there was a smile on her lips.

“Come in, girls,” she cried.  “Godmother and I are making alphabet rhymes.  We started at A, and have been taking turns.  She has just made a good one:  ’P is a pie-man, portly and proud, pugnaciously prattling’—­What’s the rest of it, godmother?  You tell them.  I have forgotten.”

But Mrs. Sherman’s rhyme was broken short in an astonished exclamation, as her glance fell on the Little Colonel.