“Sammy,” said Miss Margaret, when she found herself alone with the child, “wasn’t your mother afraid you would get ill, coming over here, on such a cool evening, barefooted?” “Och, no; she leaves me let my shoes off near till it snows already.  The teacher we had last year he used to do worse ’n that yet!—­He’d wash his feet in the winter-time!” said Sammy, in the tone of one relating a deed of valor.  “I heard Aunty Em speak how he washed ’em as much as oncet a week, still, in winter!  The Doc he sayed no wonder that feller took cold!”

Miss Margaret gazed at the child with a feeling of fascination.  “But, Sammy,” she said wonderingly, “your front porches get a weekly bath in winter—­do the people of New Canaan wash their porches oftener than they wash themselves?”

“Porches gets dirty,” reasoned Sammy.  “Folks don’t get dirty in winter-time.  Summer’s the time they get dirty, and then they mebbe wash in the run.”

“Oh!” said Miss Margaret.

During the six weeks of her life in Canaan, she had never once seen in this or any other household the least sign of any toilet appointments, except a tin basin at the pump, a roller-towel on the porch, and a small mirror in the kitchen.  Tooth-brushes, she had learned, were almost unknown in the neighborhood, nearly every one of more than seventeen years wearing “store-teeth.”  It was a matter of much speculation to her that these people, who thought it so essential to keep their houses, especially their front porches, immaculately scrubbed, should never feel an equal necessity as to their own persons.

The doctor came to the door and told Sammy he was ready.  “I wouldn’t do it to go such a muddy night like what this is,” he ruefully declared to Miss Margaret, “if I didn’t feel it was serious; Jake Getz wouldn’t spend any hirin’ a doctor, without it was some serious.  I’m sorry I got to go.”

“Good-night, Sammy,” said Miss Margaret.  “Give Tillie my love; and if she is not able to come to school to-morrow, I shall go to see her.”

V

“Novels ain’t moral, Doc!”

Tillie still lay on the kitchen settee, her father sitting at her side, when the doctor and Sammy arrived.  The other children had all been put to bed, and Mrs. Getz, seated at the kitchen table, was working on a pile of mending by the light of a small lamp.

The doctor’s verdict, when he had examined his patient’s tongue, felt her pulse, and taken her temperature, was not clear.

“She’s got a high fever.  That’s ’a all the fu’ther I can go now.  What it may turn to till morning, I can’t tell till morning.  Give her these powders every hour, without she’s sleeping.  That’s the most that she needs just now.”

“Yes, if she can keep them powders down,” said Mr. Getz, doubtfully.  “She can’t keep nothin’ with her.”