Crowding solicitously about her, the women got her upstairs and into dry clothing.  This was barely accomplished when Mary Dickey came into the room, in a little blue cotton gown, to take her to Danny.

“Arnold says he’s got him crying, and that’s a good sign, Shandon,” said Mary.  “And he says that rough walk pro’bly saved him.”

Shandon tried to speak again, but failed again, and the two girls went out together.  Mary presently came back alone, and the lessened but not uncheerful group downstairs settled down to a vigil.  Various reports drifted from the sick-room, but it was almost midnight before Mrs. Larabee came down with definite news.

“How is he?” echoed Johnnie, sinking into a chair.  “Give me a cup of that coffee, Mary.  That’s a good girl.  Well, say, it looks like you can’t kill no Deaneville child with mushrooms.  He’s asleep now.  But say, he was a pretty sick kid!  Doc’ looks like something the cat brought home, and I’m about dead, but Danny seems to feel real chipper.  And eat!  And of course that poor girl looks like she’d inherited the earth, as the Scriptures say.  The ice is what you might call broken between the whole crowd of us and Shandon Waters.  She’s sitting there holding Danny and smiling softly at any one who peeks in!” And, her voice thickening suddenly with tears on the last words, Mrs. Larabee burst out crying and fumbled in her unaccustomed grandeur for a handkerchief.

Mary Dickey and Arnold Lowell were married just twenty-four hours later than they had planned, the guests laughing joyously at the wilted decorations and stale sandwiches.  After the ceremony the bride and bridegroom went softly up stairs, and the doctor had a last approving look at the convalescent Danny.

Mary, almost oppressed by the sense of her own blessedness on this day of good wishes and affectionate demonstration, would have gently detached her husband’s arm from her waist as they went to the door, that Shandon might not be reminded of her own loss and aloneness.

But the doctor, glancing back, knew that in Shandon’s thoughts to-day there was no room for sorrow.  Her whole body was curved about the child as he lay in her lap, and her adoring look was intent upon him.  Danny was smiling up at his mother in a blissful interval, his soft little hand lying upon her contented heart.

GAYLEY THE TROUBADOUR

Through the tremulous beauty of the California woods, in the silent April afternoon, came Sammy Peneyre, riding Clown.  The horse chose his own way on the corduroy road, for the rider was lost in dreams.  Clown was a lean old dapple gray so far advanced in years and ailments that when Doctor Peneyre had bought him, the year before, the dealer had felt constrained to remark: 

“He’s better’n he looks, Doc’.  You’ll get your seven dollars’ worth out of him yet!”

To which the doctor had amiably responded: