the couch, completely exhausted, and wearily closed his eyes.

The Little Colonel looked at his white face in alarm. All the gladness
seemed to have been taken out of the homecoming.

Her mother was busy trying to make him comfortable, and paid no
attention to the disconsolate little figure wandering about the house
alone. Mom Beck had gone for the doctor.

The supper was drying up in the warming-oven. The ice-cream was melting
in the freezer. Nobody seemed to care. There was no one to notice the
pretty table with its array of flowers and cut glass and silver.

When Mom Beck came back, Lloyd ate all by herself, and then sat out on
the kitchen door-step while the doctor made his visit.

She was just going mournfully off to bed with an aching lump in her
throat, when her mother opened the door.

"Come tell papa good-night," she said. "He's lots better now."

She climbed up on the bed beside him, and buried her face on his
shoulder to hide the tears she had been trying to keep back all evening.

"How the child has grown!" he exclaimed. "Do you notice, Beth, how much
plainer she talks? She does not seem at all like the baby I left last
spring. Well, she'll soon be six years old,--a real little woman. She'll
be papa's little comfort."

The ache in her throat was all gone after that. She romped with Fritz