"That," laughed Bettie, after the milkman had delivered her safely at her own door, "was something different. It isn't everybody who has a chance to drive down the milky way."
"Are you hungry?" asked her mother, meeting her at the door, with a bowl of broth.
"Not so very," returned Bettie, nevertheless accepting the broth and eating it eagerly. "I drank a whole pint of the milk-wagon milk."
Next, all Bettie's friends began to invite the little girl to visit them. She had to spend whole days or pieces of days with Jean, with Marjory, with Henrietta, with Mabel (who nursed her so devotedly that she almost suffered a relapse), and with Mrs. Crane and Mr. Black. But, as yet, she had not returned to her old footing with her comrades; she was not yet sufficiently strong for the old rough-and-tumble play, the happy-go-lucky hours in Dandelion Cottage. She was a new variety of Bettie, a fragile Bettie, to be handled with the utmost tenderness.
Mr. Black and his stout sister, Mrs. Crane, than whom Bettie had no stauncher friends, had swung the largest and most gorgeous hammock that Lakeville could furnish, under their trees for her—they were only sorry that she couldn't use two hammocks.
"Peter," said Mrs. Crane (they were sitting on the porch to keep an eye on Bettie, who, in spite of the gorgeousness of her swaying couch, had fallen asleep), "that child ought to stay outdoors all the time. That rectory is a stuffy place, crowded up against the church and right in the smoke of two factories. As soon as she's strong enough to stand it, she ought to go camping—some place on the lake shore where the air is pure."
"Of course she ought," agreed Mr. Black, heartily. "It's the best tonic in the world for growing children—there's nothing like it in bottles."
"Isn't there any way we could manage it? If we only had a camp——"
"We'll have one," promised Mr. Black, promptly.