“How are you feelin’ to-night, Lois?” she inquired, in a tone of forcible commiseration.

“I’m pretty well, thank you,” said Lois.

“Seems to me you’re lookin’ pretty slim.  You’d ought to take a little vacation.”  Mrs. Babcock surveyed her with a kind of pugnacious pity.

Lois stood quite erect in the midst of the children.  “I don’t think I need any vacation,” said she, smiling constrainedly.  She pushed gently past Mrs. Babcock, with the children at her heels.

“You’d better take a little one,” Mrs. Babcock called after her.

Lois kept on as if she did not hear.  Her face was flushed, and her head seemed full of beating pulses.

One of the children, a thin little girl in a blue dress, turned around and grimaced at Mrs. Babcock; another pulled Lois’ dress.  “Teacher, Jenny Whitcomb is makin’ faces at Mis’ Babcock,” she drawled.

“Jenny!” said Lois sharply; and the little girl turned her face with a scared nervous giggle.  “You mustn’t ever do such a thing as that again,” said Lois.  She reached down and took the child’s little restive hand and led her along.

Lois had not much farther to go.  The children all clamored, “Good-by, teacher!” when she turned in at her own gate.

She went in through the sitting-room to the kitchen, and settled down into a chair with her hat on.

“Well, so you’ve got home,” said her mother; she was moving about preparing supper.  She smiled anxiously at Lois as she spoke.

Lois smiled faintly, but her forehead was frowning.  “Has that Mrs. Babcock been here?” she asked.

“Yes.  Did you meet her?”

“Yes, I did; and I’d like to know what she meant telling me I’d ought to take a vacation, and I looked bad.  I wish people would let me alone tellin’ me how I look.”

“She meant well, I guess,” said her mother, soothingly.  “She said she was goin’ to send you over a dish of her honey.”

“I don’t want any of her honey.  I don’t see what folks want to send things in to me, as if I were sick, for.”

“Oh, I guess she thought I’d like some too,” returned her mother, with a kind of stiff playfulness.  “You needn’t think you’re goin’ to have all that honey.”

“I don’t want any of it,” said Lois.  The window beside which she sat was open; under it, in the back yard, was a little thicket of mint, and some long sprays of sweetbrier bowing over it.  Lois reached out and broke off a piece of the sweetbrier and smelled it.

“Supper’s ready,” said her mother, presently; and she took off her hat and went listlessly over to the table.

The table, covered with a white cloth, was set back against the wall, with only one leaf spread.  There were bread and butter and custards and a small glass dish of rhubarb sauce for supper.

Lois looked at the dish.  “I didn’t know the rhubarb was grown,” said she.

“I managed to get enough for supper,” replied her mother, in a casual voice.