"So I notice," returned Doctor Bennett, his mouth stern, his eyes twinkling. "Don't let me detain you."
"I want to know," demanded Bettie, "why I haven't any knees?"
"I think," replied Doctor Bennett, "that we ought to get you outdoors a great deal more than we do. You're not getting air enough. Where's your jacket? I'll take you for a drive this minute—I'm going to South Lakeville by the shore road to see a patient. Think you're good for a buggy ride?"
"I'm sure of it," laughed Bettie, "but I'm afraid my bones will scratch all the varnish off your nice bright buggy. I've twice as many ribs as I used to have—perhaps my knees have turned into ribs!"
Bettie returned an hour later; none the worse for her drive and hungry enough to eat even Mabel's unsightly pudding, after finishing a large bowl of broth.
"It tastes fine," she confided to Doctor Bennett, who had insisted on carrying the slender invalid upstairs, "if you eat it with your eyes shut. My! I'm hungry as a bear—wasn't it lucky that mother had my lunch ready?"
"I guess you'll have to have another ride to-morrow," laughed the pleased doctor. "Fresh air is all the medicine you need—you ought to live outdoors."
There was danger, however, of Bettie's getting more fresh air than any one little maid could ever hope to breathe, for, the next morning, there was an item in Lakeville's daily paper that brought curious and almost instantaneous results. The paragraph read:
"Miss Bettie Tucker, who has been seriously ill for several weeks, enjoyed her first outing yesterday."
It wasn't a very big item, Bettie thought, for so momentous an event, but it was quite large enough for kind-hearted Lakeville. Immediately, everybody with anything one could ride in wanted to take Bettie driving. Mr. Black placed his automobile at her disposal. Henrietta Bedford's grandmother, Mrs. Slater, laid her horses, the grandest of her carriages, and her only coachman at Bettie's bedroom-slippered feet; Jean and Marjory laboriously collected sufficient money to hire a sad old horse, more or less attached to a dilapidated cab, from the very cheapest livery stable for a whole expensive hour. Nearly all the members of Doctor Tucker's congregation took turns inviting Bettie to ride in anything from a buckboard to an omnibus. Even Julius Muhlhauser, the milkman, insisted on carrying her, in his flaming scarlet cart, over three-fourths of his milk-route, one morning.