rave about.  So up comes Bennett, and he got into the wrong cottage.  First thing I knew, some one softly pushed open the door, and in walked Bennett at the front end of the long basket, the assistant trailing him in the rear.  I felt kind of weak, so I just laid there until Bennett got beside me.  Then I slowly rose up and put out one cold clammy hand and touched his.  Bennett choked and the assistant yelled, and they dropped the basket and fled.  I rang the bell and told the nurse to make that crazy undertaker come and get the right corpse that was patiently waiting for him, and she called him on the telephone.  Nothing doing.  A corpse that didn’t have any better judgment than that could stay in bed until doomsday for all of him.  So they had to get another undertaker.  But Bennett told her to get the basket and he would send the assistant after it.  But I held it for ransom, and Bennett had to pay me two dollars for it.”

His auditors wiped their eyes, half ashamed of their laughter.

“It is funny,” said Nancy Tucker, “but it seems awful to laugh at such things.”

“Awful!  Not a bit of it,” declared Barrows.  “It’s religious.  Doesn’t it say in the Bible, ’Laugh and the world laughs with you, Die and the world laughs on’?”

“I laugh,—­but I am ashamed of myself,” confessed Carol.

“What do women want to spoil a good story for?” protested Nevius.  “That’s a funny story, and it is true.  It is supposed to be laughed at.  And Reddy is better off.  He had so many bugs you couldn’t tell which was bugs and which was Reddy.  He was an ugly guy, too, and he was stuck on a girl and she turned him down.  She said Reddy was all right, but no one could raise a eugenical family with a father as ugly as Reddy.  He didn’t care if he died.  Every night he used to flip up a coin to see if he would live till morning.  He said if he got off ahead of us he was coming back to haunt us.  But I told him he’d better fly while the flying was good, for I sure would show him a lively race up to the rosy clouds if I ever caught up.  I knew if he got there first he’d pick out the best harp and leave me a wheezy mouth organ.  He always wanted the best of everything.”

Just then the nurse opened the door.

“Barrows and Nevius,” she said sternly.  “This is the rest hour, and you are both under orders.  Please go home at once and go to bed, or I shall report to Mrs. Hartley.”  When they had gone, she looked searchingly into the face of the brand-new chaser.  “How are you feeling now?” she asked.

“Oh, pretty well.”  And then she added honestly, “It really isn’t as bad as I had expected.  I think I can stand it a while.”

“Have you caught a glimpse of the sunny slopes yet?”

Instinctively they turned their eyes to the distant mountains, with the white crown of snow at the top, and beneath, long radiating lines of alternating light and shadow, stretching down to the mesa.