“Not that word, sweetheart, never again!” warned the Lady Principal, laying her finger on Grace’s lips. “Go nicely now with Dora, and make no trouble.”
“No, no, no!” still screamed Grace: her flushed face and feverish appearance sending fresh alarm to her aunt’s heart.
“Why, look here, Millikins! I’m Dorothy. The ‘sleepy-head’ you came to wake up this morning. Won’t you go with me, dear? If Auntie Prin says ‘yes,’ I’ll take you back to bed, and if you’ll show me where.”
Millikins looked long and steadily at Dolly’s appealing arms, then slowly crept into them.
“Pretty! Millikins’ll go with pretty Dorothy!”
So they went away, indeed a “pretty” sight to the anxious aunt. Dorothy’s white gown and scarlet ribbons transformed her from the rain-and-mud-bespattered girl of a few hours before, while her loving interest in the frightened child banished all fear and homesickness from her own mobile face.
Little Grace’s room was a small one opening off from Miss Muriel’s, and as soon as the lecture was over and she was free, she took Dr. Winston with her to see the child. Her dark little face was still very flushed, but she was asleep, Dorothy also. The girl had drawn a chair close to the child’s cot and sat there with an arm protectingly thrown over her charge: and now a fresh anxiety rose in the Lady Principal’s heart.
“Oh! Doctor, what if it should be something contagious? I don’t see why I didn’t think of that before. Besides, I sacrificed Miss Calvert’s opportunity to hear the lecture for Grace’s sake. How could I have been so thoughtless!”