“Where is Roger?”

“I left him down on the beach, with Miss Wynne.  I suppose he is still there.”

“When you see him,” commanded Miss Mattie, with some asperity, “will you kindly send him home?  It’s no time for him to be gallivantin’ around with girls, when his mother’s been so near death.”

“I will,” Allan assured her, reaching for his hat.  “I hope you appreciate what he has done for you.”

[Sidenote:  The Doctor Laughs]

When he went down the road, his shoulders were shaking suspiciously.  Miss Mattie was watching him through the lace curtains that glorified the parlour windows.  “Seems as if he had St. Vitus’s dance,” she mused.  “Wonder why he doesn’t mix up some dog-pizen, and cure himself?”

When he was sure that he was out of sight, Allan sat down on a convenient boulder at the side of the road, and gave himself up to unrestrained mirth.  The medicine which was about to prove fatal to Fido would have caused only prolonged sleep if taken in small doses, at proper intervals, by an adult.  “It’s a wonder she didn’t take ’em all at once,” he thought.  “And if she had—­” He speculated, idly, upon the probable effect.

His conscience pricked him slightly on account of the exaggeration in which he had mischievously indulged, but he told himself that Roger would be far better off in the city and his mother’s consent would make his going much less difficult.  He also realised that if Roger were there to amuse Barbara, Eloise might have more spare time than she would otherwise.

He stopped long enough to give the druggist a bad quarter of an hour, and then went back to the beach.  Eloise and Roger were where he had left them, and the boy’s gloom was entirely gone.

“Your mother wants you,” he said, as he sat down on the other side of Eloise.

“All right—­I’ll go right up.  How did she take it?”

“Very well.  Just remember that you’ve saved her life, and you’ll have no trouble.”

[Sidenote:  Light-Hearted]

When Roger went up the street, he was whistling, from sheer light-heartedness.  Eloise had made so many plans for his future that he saw fame and fortune already within his reach.

When he knocked, never having been allowed the freedom of a latch key, he noted that all the blinds in the house were closed and wondered whether his mother had gone to sleep again.  After a suitable interval, she opened the door, clad in her best black silk, and portentously solemn.

“Why, Mother, what’s the matter?”

“Come in,” she whispered.  “Doctor Conrad has just been tellin’ me how near I come to death.  Oh, my son,” she cried, throwing her arms around his neck, “you have saved my life.”

[Sidenote:  Two Greetings]

It seemed to Roger like a paragraph torn from The Metropolitan Weekly, but he patted her back soothingly as she clung to him.  Maternal outbursts of this sort were extremely rare.  He remembered only one other greeting like this—­the day he had been swimming in the river with three other small boys and had been brought home in a blanket, half drowned.