"I've been very thankful for it, though."
"If you stay another year, the salary must be raised. Do you like it?"
"Not as well as gardening."
"Well, take matters easy," advised the good doctor.
The tonic was sent over. Hal made a strong fight against the languor; but the enemy was rather too stout for him. Every day there was a little fever; and at night he tossed from side to side, and could not sleep. Granny made him a "pitcher of tea," her great cure-all,—valerian, gentian, and wild-cherry,—in a pitcher that had lost both handle and spout; and, though he drank it to please her, it did not appear to help him any.
It seemed to him, some days, that he never could walk home from school. Now and then he caught a ride, to be sure; but the weary step after step on these warm afternoons almost used up his last remnant of strength.
"Now," said Dr. Meade when school had ended, "you really must begin to take care of yourself. You are as white as if you had not an ounce of blood in your whole body. No work of any kind, remember. It is to be a regular vacation."
Hal acquiesced from sheer inability to do any thing else. The house was quiet; for Dot never had been a noisy child since her crying-days. She was much more like Florence, except the small vanities, and air of martyrdom, that so often spoiled the elder sister's sacrifices,—a sweet, affectionate little thing, a kind of baby, as she would always be.
Her love for Hal and Granny was perfect devotion, and held in it a strand of quaintness that made one smile. She could cook quite nicely; and sewing appeared to come natural to her. Hal called her "Small woman," as an especial term of endearment.
But they hardly knew what to make of Charlie. Instead of launching out into gayeties, as they expected (for Charlie was very fond of finery), she proved so economical, that she was almost stingy. She gave Granny a dollar a week; and they heard she was earning as much as Sarah Marshall already. In fact, Charlie was a Trojan when she worked in good earnest.