Monday morning before school time, Peggy and John Edward and Elmore came to Miss Dorcas’s door and asked for Anne.  Would she please lend them Honey-Sweet that day?  They’d be ever and ever so careful.

“Lend Honey-Sweet!” exclaimed Anne.

They hated to ask it but Lois would not take her medicine.  She had pushed aside and spilled dose after dose.  “She says she won’t take that nasty old bitter old stuff.  And her cheeks are so red and she breathes so rattly.  Mommer’s scairt.  And the doctor man’ll be so mad.  Mommer asked her if she’d take her medicine for Honey-Sweet and she said ‘Yes.’  So mommer say for us to run and beg you do please lend us your baby-doll to-day.”

“If Lois is so sick,—­oh, I suppose I must,” said Anne; “but—­Peggy, will you be careful of her every minute of the time and bring her back this afternoon—­sure and certain?”

Peggy promised, and Peggy did.  “Lois took her medicine fine,” she said, smiling and dimpling.  “Mommer give her a dost a hour before time so’s I could bring your baby-doll and get home before dark.  Here she is.  See!  I ain’t even mussed her curls.”

The next day, Lois was worse again.  Her mother confessed that they had “worrited half the night with her and not got a dost down her,” but Honey-Sweet brought her to terms.

When Miss Margery rose to go, Anne hesitated a minute, then said, “Mrs. Callahan, if I let Honey-Sweet stay here to-night with Lois, can you take good, good care of her?”

Mrs. Callahan’s face beamed.  “That I can, and that I will.  I been wantin’ to ask you to let her stay and hatin’ to do it, seein’ how much you set store by her.  I’ll take care of her good as if she was my own baby.”

The next afternoon, Anne found Honey-Sweet sitting in state on the mantel-piece beside the medicine bottle.

“She comes down with it and she goes back with it,” said Mrs. Callahan.  “The doctor was here this noon and he says she’s better and if she takes her medicine reg’lar and keeps on the mend till Sadday he thinks she’ll be all right.  I hope she’ll take it.  She does every time for that doll.”  And the worried mother looked anxiously at Anne.

“I reckon I’ll have to spare Honey-Sweet till Saturday,” said Anne, with an effort.  She missed her pet and the Callahan family was so big and so careless!  “Please, Mrs. Callahan, be careful with her every minute.  I love her so very dearly.”

“Bless your heart, I wouldn’t have harm come to her for the world.  There she sits like a queen on her throne, and ain’t took down but by my own hands with the medicine bottle.  I’ve told the kids I’ll skin ’em alive if they put finger on her.”

Saturday morning brought Peggy to see Anne,—­a sad Peggy with downcast eyes and red nose and croaking voice.

“You’ve a bad cold, Peggy, haven’t you?” said Miss Dorcas.

Peggy nodded.  “Yessum, lady.  Terrible bad.  Maybe so I’ll have the pneumony, like Lois, and maybe so I’ll die.”