“I feel a bit queer,” Arthur replied, “that’s all.  I shall be well directly.  Got a bit of a cold, I think.”

“Slept in a field with the gate open like as not,” Tom laughed.

Arthur looked at him inquiringly.

“You’ll feel better when you get your breakfast,” Tom went on.  “I don’t wonder you’re sick—­you haven’t been eatin’ enough to keep a canary bird alive.  Go on right into the house now.  I’ll feed your team.”

“It beats all what happens to our help,” Mrs. Motherwell complained to Pearl, as they washed the breakfast dishes.  “It looks very much as if Arthur is goin’ to be laid up, too, and the busy time just on us.”

Pearl was troubled.  Why should Arthur be sick?  He had plenty of fresh air; he tubbed himself regularly.  He never drank “alcoholic beverages that act directly on the liver and stomach, drying up the blood, and rendering every organ unfit for work.”  Pearl remembered the Band of Hope manual.  No, and it was not a cold.  Colds do not make people groan in the night—­it was something else.  Pearl wished her friend, Dr. Clay, would come along.  He would soon spot the trouble.

After dinner, of which Arthur ate scarcely a mouthful, as Pearl was cleaning the knives, Mrs. Motherwell came into the kitchen with a hard look on her face.  She had just missed a two-dollar bill from her satchel.

“Pearl,” she said in a strained voice, “did you see a two-dollar bill any place?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Pearl answered quickly, “Mrs Francis paid ma with one once for the washing, but I don’t know where it might be now.”

Mrs. Motherwell looked at Pearl keenly.  It was not easy to believe that that little girl would steal.  Her heart was still tender after Polly’s death, she did not want to be hard on Pearl, but the money must be some place.

“Pearl, I have lost a two-dollar bill.  If you know anything about it I want you to tell me,” she said firmly.

“I don’t know anything about it no more’n ye say ye had it and now ye’ve lost it,” Pearl answered calmly.

“Go up to your room and think about it,” she said, avoiding Pearl’s gaze.

Pearl went up the narrow little steps with a heart that swelled with indignation.

“Does she think I stole her dirty money, me that has money o’ me own—­a thief is it she takes me for?  Oh, wirra! wirra! and her an’ me wuz gittin’ on so fine, too; and like as not this’ll start the morgage and the cancer on her again.”

Pearl threw herself on the hot little bed, and sobbed out her indignation and her homesickness.  She could not put it off this time.  Catching sight of her grief-stricken face in the cracked looking glass that hung at the head of the bed, she started up suddenly.

“What am I bleatin’ for?” she said to herself, wiping her eyes on her little patched apron.  “Ye’d think to look at me that I’d been caught stealin’ the cat’s milk”—­she laughed through her tears—­“I haven’t stolen anything and what for need I cry?  The dear Lord will get me out of this just as nate as He bruk the windy for me!”