“Hush! Suppose he heard you?”
“He’d laugh,” returned Helen, knowing the kindly old physician too well to be afraid of him in any case. “Now, behave! Don’t say a word. I’m going to dress him up.”
“What?” gasped Ruth.
“You’ll see,” said the daring Helen, and she seized an old hat of the doctor’s from the top of the bookcase and set it jauntily upon the grinning skull.
“My goodness! doesn’t he look terrible that way? Oh! I’ll shut the door. He wiggles all over—just as though he were alive!”
Just then they heard the doctor bidding his caller good-bye, or Helen might have done some other ridiculous thing. The old gentleman came in, rubbing his hands, and with his eyes twinkling. He was a man who had never really grown old, and he liked to hear the girls tell of their school experiences, chuckling over their scrapes and antics with much delight.
“And how has my Goody Two-sticks gotten along this year?” he asked, for he was much interested in Mercy Curtis and her improvement, both physically and mentally. Had it not been for the doctor, Mercy might never have gotten out of her wheelchair, or gone to Briarwood Hall.
“She’s going to beat us all,” Helen declared, with enthusiasm. “Isn’t she, Ruth?”
“She will if we don’t work pretty hard,” admitted the girl of the Red Mill, who was hoping herself to be finally among the first few members of her class at the Hall. “But I would rather see Mercy win first place, I believe, than anybody else—unless it is you, Helen.”
“Don’t you fret,” laughed Helen. “You’ll never see little me at the head of the class—and you know it.”