“One of our people, a young woman named Miss Wakeley, has been on this case,” she continued, “but it seems she has allowed herself to contract the disease herself.  She went to the hospital this noon.”

Campbell, his gravity suddenly broken up, exclaimed: 

“Surely, Miss Searight, this is not the same case I read of in yesterday’s paper—­it must be, too—­Medford was the name of the place.  That case has killed one nurse already, and now the second one is down.  Don’t tell me you are going to take the same case.”

“It is the same case,” answered Lloyd, “and, of course, I am going to take it.  Did you ever hear of a nurse doing otherwise?  Why, it would seem—­seem so—­funny—­”

There was no dissuading her, and Campbell and Hattie soon ceased even to try.  She was impatient to be gone.  The station was close at hand, and she would not hear of taking the carriage thither.  However, before she left them she recurred again to the subject of her letter to Mr. Campbell, and then and there it was decided that Hattie and her maid should spend the following ten days at Lloyd’s place in Bannister.  The still country air, now that Hattie was able to take the short journey, would be more to her than many medicines, and the ponies and Lloyd’s phaeton would be left there with Lewis for her use.

“And write often, won’t you, Miss Searight?” exclaimed Hattie as Lloyd was saying good-bye.  Lloyd shook her head.

“Not that of all things,” she answered.  “If I did that we might have you, too, down with typhoid.  But you may write to me, and I hope you will,” and she gave Hattie her new address.

“Harriet,” said Campbell as the carriage drove back across the square, the father and daughter waving their hands to Lloyd, briskly on her way to the railroad station, “Harriet.”

“Yes, papa.”

“There goes a noble woman.  Pluck, intelligence, strong will—­she has them all—­and a great big heart that—­heart that—­” He clipped the end of a cigar thoughtfully and fell silent.

A day or two later, as Hattie was sitting in her little wheel-chair on the veranda of Mrs. Applegate’s house watching Charley-Joe hunting grasshoppers underneath the currant bushes, she was surprised by the sharp closing of the front gate.  A huge man with one squint eye and a heavy, square-cut jaw was coming up the walk, followed by a strange-looking dog.  Charley-Joe withdrew, swiftly to his particular hole under the veranda, moving rapidly, his body low to the ground, and taking an unnecessary number of very short steps.

The little city-bred girl distinguished the visitor from a country man at once.  Hattie had ideas of her own as to propriety, and so rose to her feet as Bennett came up, and after a moment’s hesitation made him a little bow.  Bennett at once gravely took off his cap.

“Excuse me,” he said as though Hattie were twenty-five instead of twelve.  “Is Miss Searight at home?”