Lois, meanwhile, was having a happy time with Honey-Sweet.  Anne showed how her shoes came off and on and untied her cap to display her curls.  “Here’s how she goes to sleep at night,” she said.  “I put her to bed by me and I sing to her:—­

          ’Honey, honey!  Sweet, sweet, sweet! 
          Honey, honey!  Honey-Sweet!’”

As she crooned the lullaby, Lois lisped it after her.

It grew late and Miss Dorcas rose to go.

“If you’ll take your medicine to-night, like a little lady,” said Anne, “we will come back to see you to-morrow—­Honey-Sweet and I. Mayn’t we, Cousin Dorcas?—­Oh, oh! if you cry, we can’t come!  Will you promise to take your medicine?”

“I take it now if pretty Honey stay,” said Lois.

“No, no! it isn’t time now.  But if you take it at the right time, we’ll come back, and Honey-Sweet may lie on the pillow beside you.”

The next afternoon, Anne brought Honey-Sweet, dressed in a blue muslin frock and a new hat that Miss Margery had made of lace and rosebuds and blue ribbon.

Lois’s face beamed when she saw this finery.  “Can I kiss her dwess?” she asked, gulping down the bitter draught.  “Bad medicine gone now.  Oh, the pretty flowers!” and she counted on her fingers the rosebuds on Honey-Sweet’s hat:  “One, two, free, five, seben, leben, hundred beauty flowers.”

Mrs. Callahan was, as she said, ‘flustered.’  Her thread snarled and snapped as she sewed on buttons.  “Doctor was here after you left yestiddy,” she said.  “You’d ‘a’ thought he’d been at that window peekin’ in.  He didn’t believe me at all when I told him Lois was takin’ her medicine reg’lar.  He says she’s gettin’ worse every day since Choosday, and if she don’t take her medicine reg’lar, he can’t do her no good.  She took it two—­three times after you left with me a-tellin’ her ’bout that beauteous doll that was comin’ to-morrow.  But she’s little and to-morrow looked slow in comin’, so after ’while when I’d hold out the spoon, she’d just shake her head and say, ‘No, no, no!  Mammy tellin’ story!  Sweet Honey ain’t comin’.’”

“It is as I told you it would be, Mrs. Callahan,” said Miss Margery.  “Your child doesn’t trust you.  You have told her falsehoods and now she doesn’t believe you.”

“Ain’t it smart of her to take that much notice and she so little!” said Mrs. Callahan, admiringly.  “Well, glory be, she’s got one more dost down her.”

When it was time for Anne to go, Lois wailed aloud.  “I don’t want sweet Honey to go!  I don’t want sweet Honey to go!”

“If you’ll take your medicine, she’ll come back to see you,” promised Anne.

“Don’t want her to come back—­want her to stay,” sobbed Lois.

Anne tried to soothe her with promises that she would bring Honey-Sweet back soon, dressed in a pink hat and a pink-flowered muslin.  But Lois would not be consoled and Anne left her at last in tears.