fattening up as fast as he thought they ought, and he un
earthed a hideous scandal. They haven't received a whiff of cod-
liver oil for three whole weeks! At that point he exploded, and
all was joy and excitement and hysterics.

Betsy says that she had to send Sadie Kate to the laundry on
an improvised errand, as his language was not fit for orphan
ears. By the time I got home he had gone, and Miss Snaith had
retired, weeping, to her room, and the whereabouts of fourteen
bottles of cod-liver oil was still unexplained. He had accused
her at the top of his voice of taking them herself. Imagine Miss
Snaith,--she who looks so innocent and chinless and inoffensive--
stealing cod-liver oil from these poor helpless little orphans
and guzzling it in private!

Her defense consisted in hysterical assertions that she loved
the children, and had done her duty as she saw it. She did not
believe in giving medicine to babies; she thought drugs bad for
their poor little stomachs. You can imagine Sandy! Oh, dear!
oh, dear! To think I missed it!

Well, the tempest raged for three days, and Sadie Kate nearly
ran her little legs off carrying peppery messages back and forth
between us and the doctor. It is only under stress that I
communicate with him by telephone, as he has an interfering old
termagant of a housekeeper who "listens in" on the down-stairs
switch. I don't wish the scandalous secrets of the John Grier
spread abroad. The doctor demanded Miss Snaith's instant
dismissal, and I refused. Of course she is a vague, unfocused,
inefficient old thing, but she does love the children, and with