FOR the next few weeks the Cottagers led as quiet a life as almost daily association with Henrietta would permit. Jean grew a trifle taller, Marjory discovered new ways of doing her hair and Mabel remained as round and ruddy as ever. But everybody was worried about Bettie. She seemed listless and indifferent in school, she fell asleep over her books when she attempted to study at night, she grew averse to getting up mornings and day by day she grew thinner and paler, until even heedless Mabel observed that she was all eyes.

"What's the trouble?" asked Jean, when Bettie said that she didn't feel like going to the Public Library corner to view the Uncle Tom's Cabin parade. "A walk would do you good, and it's only four blocks."

"I'm tired," returned Bettie. "My head would like to go but my feet would rather not. And my hands don't want to do anything—or even my tongue. You can tell me about the parade—that'll be easier than looking at it."

Now, this was a new Bettie. The old one, while not exactly a noisy person, had been so active physically that the others had sometimes found it difficult to follow her dancing footsteps. She had ever been quick to wait on the other members of her large family; or to do errands, in the most obliging fashion, for any of her friends. This new Bettie eyed the Tucker cat sympathetically when it mewed for milk; but she relegated the task of feeding pussy to one of her much more unwilling small brothers.

"She needs a tonic," said Mrs. Tucker, giving Bettie dark-brown doses from a large bottle. "It's the spring, I guess."

Two days after the parade there was great excitement among Bettie's friends. She had not appeared at school. That in itself was not an unusual occurrence, for Bettie often stayed at home to help her overburdened mother through particularly trying days; but when Jean stopped in to consult her little friend about homemade valentines, Mrs. Tucker met her with the news that Bettie was sick in bed.

"Can't I see her?" asked Jean.

"I'm afraid not," replied Mrs. Tucker, who looked worried. "She's asleep just now and she has a temperature."

When Mabel heard this latter fact she at once consulted Dr. Bennett.

"Father," she queried, "do folks ever die of temperature?"

"Why, yes," returned the Doctor. "If the temperature is below zero they sometimes freeze. Why?"

"Mrs. Tucker says that's what Bettie's got—temperature."

"It isn't a disease, child. It's a condition of heat or cold. But it's too soon to say anything about Bettie—go play with your dolls."

Henrietta and the remaining Cottagers immediately thought of lovely things to do for Bettie. So, too, did Mr. Black. Impulsive Henrietta purchased a large box of most attractive candy, Jean made her a lovely sponge cake that sat down rather sadly in the middle but rose nobly at both ends; Mabel begged half a lemon pie from the cook; Marjory concocted a wonderful bowl of orange jelly with candied cherries on top, Mrs. Crane made a steaming pitcherful of chicken soup and Mr. Black sent in a great basket of the finest fruit that the Lakeville market afforded.

But when all these successive and well-meaning visitors presented themselves and their unstinted offerings at the Rectory door, Dr. Tucker received them sadly.

"Bettie is down with a fever," said he. "She can't eat anything."

The days that followed were the most dreadful that the Cottagers had ever known. They lived in suspense. Day after day when they asked for news of Bettie the response was usually, "Just about the same." Occasionally, however, Dr. Bennett shook his head dubiously and said, "Not quite so well to-day."

For weeks—for years it seemed to the disheartened children—these were the only tidings that reached them from the sick-room. There was a trained nurse whose white cap sometimes gleamed in an upper window, the grave-faced, uncommunicative doctor visited the house twice a day, a boy with parcels from the drug store could frequently be seen entering the Rectory gate and that was about all that the terribly interested friends could learn concerning their beloved Bettie. They spent most of their time hovering quietly and forlornly about Mrs. Mapes's doorstep, for that particular spot furnished the best view of the afflicted Rectory. They wanted, poor little souls, to keep as close to Bettie as possible. If the sun shone during this time, they did not know it; for all the days seemed dark and miserable.

"If we could only help a little," mourned Jean, who looked pale and anxious, "it wouldn't be so bad."

"I teased her," sighed Henrietta, repentantly, "only two days before she was taken sick. I do wish I hadn't."

"I gave her the smaller half of my orange," lamented Mabel, "the very last time I saw her. If—if I don't ever see—see her again——"

"Oh, well," comforted Marjory, hastily, "she might have been just that much sicker if she'd eaten the larger piece. But I wish I hadn't talked so much about boarding school. It always worried her and sometimes I tried [Marjory blushed guiltily at the remembrance] to make her just a little envious."

"I'm afraid," confessed Jean, "I sometimes neglected her just a little for Henrietta; but I mean to make up for it if—if I have a chance."

"That's it," breathed Marjory, softly, "if we only have a chance."

Then, because the March wind wailed forlornly, because the waiting had been so long and because it seemed to the discouraged children as if the chance, after all, were extremely slight—as slight and frail a thing as poor little Bettie herself—the four friends sat very quietly for many minutes on the rail of the Mapes's broad porch, with big tears flowing down their cheeks. Presently Mabel fell to sobbing outright.

Mr. Black, on his way home from his office, found them there. He had meant to salute them in his usual friendly fashion, but at sight of their disconsolate faces he merely glanced at them inquiringly.

"She's—she's just about the same," sobbed Jean.

Mr. Black, without a word, proceeded on his way; but all the sparkle had vanished from his dark eyes and his countenance seemed older. He, too, was unhappy on Bettie's account and he lived in hourly dread of unfavorable news. The very next morning, however, there was a more hopeful air about Dr. Bennett when he left the Rectory. Mabel, waiting at home, questioned him mutely with her eyes.

"A very slight change for the better," said he, "but it is too soon for us to be sure of anything. We're not out of the woods yet."

Next came the tidings that Bettie was really improving, though not at all rapidly; yet it was something to know that she was started on the road to recovery.

Perhaps the tedious days that followed were the most trying days of all, however, for the impatient children; because the "road to recovery" in Bettie's case seemed such a tremendously long road that her little friends began to fear that Bettie would never come into sight at the end of it, but she did at last. And such a forlorn Bettie as she was!

She had certainly been very ill. They had shaved her poor little head, her eyes seemed almost twice their usual size and the girls had not believed that any living person could become so pitiably thin; but the wasting fever was gone and what was left of Bettie was still alive.

Long before the invalid was able to sit up, the girls had been admitted one by one and at different times, to take a look at her. Bettie had smiled at them. She had even made a feeble little joke about being able to count every one of her two hundred bones.

After a time, Bettie could sit up in bed. A few days later, rolled in a gaily flowered quilt presented by the women of the parish; she occupied a big, pillowed chair near the window; and all four of the girls were able to throw kisses to her from Jean's porch. And now she could eat a few spoonfuls of Mrs. Crane's savory broth, a very little of Marjory's orange jelly and one or two of Mr. Black's imported grapes. But, for a long, long time, Bettie progressed no further than the chair.

"I don't know what ails that child," confessed puzzled Dr. Bennett. "She's like a piece of elastic with all the stretch gone from the rubber. She seems to lack something; not exactly vitality—animation, perhaps, or ambition. Yes, she certainly lacks ambition. She ought to be outdoors by now."

"Hurry and get well," urged Jean, who had been instructed to try to rouse her too-slowly-improving friend. "The weather's warmer every day and it won't be long before we can open Dandelion Cottage. And we've sworn a tremendous vow not to show Henrietta—she's crazy to see it—a single inch of that house until you're able to trot over with us. Here's the key. You're to keep it until you're ready to unlock that door yourself."

"Drop it into that vase," directed Bettie. "It seems a hundred miles to that cottage, and I'll never have legs enough to walk so far."

"Two are enough," encouraged Jean.

"Both of mine," mourned Bettie, displaying a wrinkled stocking, "wouldn't make a whole one."

"Mrs. Slater wants to take you to drive every day, just as soon as you are able to wear clothes. She told me to tell you."

"It seems a fearfully long way to the stepping stone," sighed Bettie. "Go home, please. It's makes me tired to think of driving."

"There's certainly something amiss with Bettie," said Dr. Bennett, when told of this interview. "Some little spring in her seems broken. We must find it and mend it or we won't have any Bettie."