much wrong with Ann. You have been letting your forethought and your
natural anxiety run away with you. There is not the slightest occasion
for alarm. If there were, I should not dream of hiding it from one so
well-prepared as yourself. As it is, you have taken a lot of needless
trouble--this beautiful feather-bed, for example! I feel sure that Ann
would do very well in her own bed."

The victim of the feathers gave a relieved gasp which her aunt mistook
for a sigh of regret.

"Her own bed's well enough for anything ordinary," she admitted in a
mollified tone. "Even if it is a store mattress."

"Quite good enough. Many a little girl would be glad of it." The
doctor's tone was virtuous. "If you will allow me, I shall carry her in
now. You see, she is cooler already. By to-morrow, if she takes her
medicine, she ought to be as well as ever."

Ann's own room turned out to be on the shady side, and though not so
grand as the spare-room, it was pleasantly cool. The little bed with the
hard mattress and the snowy counterpane was infinitely to be preferred
to the ocean of feathers, and the rescued maiden lay back on her smaller
pillows with a sigh of gratitude.

"Sure you won't tell?" she whispered as he laid her down.

"Honour bright. Cross my heart! But you must take the medicine. It's
nasty, but not too nasty, and you mustn't squeal--or it will be the
spare-room again. Red cheeks and prickly heat are consequences, but
feather-beds and medicine are retribution."