Lois looked inquiringly at Anne.
"Take your medicine like a good girl," said Honey-Sweet's little mother, "and I'll let you hold my baby doll in your own hands."
Lois opened her mouth to receive the bitter draught and then stretched out her arms for Honey-Sweet. She touched shoes and dress and hair with light, admiring fingers.
"Pretty sweet Honey," she murmured.
Mrs. Callahan breathed a sigh of relief. "That's the first dost of medicine we've got her to take to-day," she said. "We've all been tryin' to worrit it down her. We've give her everything in the house she fancied. Pa he paid her a bottle of beer to take a spoonful last night. Bless you, no'm"—even in her distress she laughed at Miss Dorcas's shocked look—"she didn't drink a drop of it. She likes to see it sizzle, and she had him pull off the cap and let it foam and drizzle on the floor."
"I would whip her," said Miss Dorcas, drawing her mouth down at the corners.
"No'm, you wouldn't," said Mrs. Callahan, "not if you was her mother and she sick. But it do worrit me awful. These two days I been pourin' out a spoonful of her medicine every two hours—time she ought to take it—and a-throwin' it away. It's a dreadful waste. But I got to do something to make the doctor think she's took it. It makes him so mad when she don't."
Miss Dorcas exclaimed in dismay. "Aren't you afraid the child will die if she doesn't take the medicine?"
"Yessum, I am. But what can I do?" said Mrs. Callahan. "I try to get her to take it every time she ought to have a dost. And what's the use of worritin' the doctor if she won't? It makes him so mad."
Lois, meanwhile, was having a happy time with Honey-Sweet. Anne showed how her shoes came off and on and untied her cap to display her curls. "Here's how she goes to sleep at night," she said. "I put her to bed by me and I sing to her:—