Lankton always makes me. I went in, and the room was hermetically
sealed, with a roaring fire in the air-tight stove."

"To-day!" exclaimed Mrs. Grahame; "the woman will die!"

"Not she!" said Hildegarde. "I was nearly suffocated, and
protested, with such breath as I could find; but she said, 'Oh,
Miss Grahame, my dear! you don't know anything about trouble or
sickness, and no need to before your time. A breath of air, my
dear, is like the bellers to my neurology--the bellers itself! Ah!
I ain't closed my eyes, not to speak of, since you was here last.'

"I tried to convince her that good air was better than bad, since
she must breathe some kind of air; but she only shook her head and
groaned, and told me about a woman who got into her oven and shut
the door, and stayed there till she was baked 'a beautiful light
brown,' as Mrs. Lincoln says. ''T was a brick oven, dear, such as
you don't see 'em nowadays; and she was cured of her neurology,
slick and slap; but I don't never expect no such help of mine, now
Mr. Aytoun's dead and gone. Not but what your blessed ma is a
mother to me, and so I always tell the neighbours.'

"Do you want any more, missis? I can go on indefinitely, if you
like. I stayed as long as I dared, and managed to hold the door
open quite a bit, so that a little air really did get in; and I
gave her the liniment, and rubbed her poor old back, and then gave
her a spoonful of jelly, and ran. That is the first part of my
tale. Then, I was coming home through the Ladies' Garden, and I
found my Hugh playing Narcissus over a pool, and wondering whether
freckles were dirt on his soul that came out in spots--the lamb!