"--when you get blue?" suggested Roger.
"I'll have to go there now to get revived if those women who walked to town don't turn up soon," and the Matron went to the corner of the house whence she could see the lane that led from the road. "If they come home ill I'll have to ask you to make two bed trays," she suggested as she peered across the grass.
"How do you make them?"
"Ask Ethel Blue."
"Merely put legs on a light board so that the weight of the plates will be lifted from the sick person's legs as he sits up in bed."
"What's to prevent the plates sliding off?"
"Nothing if he's much of a kicker, I should say," laughed Roger; "but you could put a little fence an inch or two high at the back and sides and keep them on board."
"You'd better begin them right off," said Mrs. Schuler dryly, "for here they come."
She disappeared around the corner and the young people followed to see what was the matter.
Trouble there was in very truth. Mrs. Paterno led the way stumbling and running. Her face was flushed a deep, threatening crimson and her breath came fast. By the arm she held little Pietro, who from exhaustion had ceased to scream and merely gave a gulping moan when the gravel scraped his bare knees as his mother jerked him along regardless of whether he was on his feet or whether she dragged him. Behind them at some distance came Mrs. Tsanoff carrying her baby in her arms--one of the twins that always seemed to be merely "holding on to life by the tips of its fingers," to use Gertrude's expression, and now seemed to have lost even that frail hold. It lay in its mother's arms white and with its eyes closed.