'Miss Ralston, where are you going? You don’t go this way.'
'I’m going to see you home, David,' she replied firmly. 'I can’t let you go alone—like this.'
'Oh, teacher, don’t, please don’t! I’m all right—I’m not sick,—it’s not far—Don’t, Miss Ralston, please!'
In the February dusk, Miss Ralston saw the tears rise to his eyes. Whatever was wrong with him, it was plain that her presence only made him suffer the more. Accordingly she yielded to his entreaty.
'I hope you’ll be all right, David,' she said, in a tone she might have used to a full-grown man. 'Good-bye.' And she turned the corner.
II
All the way home Miss Ralston debated the wisdom of allowing him to go alone, but as she recalled his look and his entreating voice, she felt anew the compulsion that had made her yield. She attributed his sudden breakdown entirely to overwrought nerves, and remorsefully resolved not to subject him in the future to the strain of extra hours after school.
Her misgivings were revived the next morning, when David failed to appear with the ringing of the first gong, as was his habit. But before the children had taken their seats, David’s younger brother, Bennie, brought her news of the missing boy.
'David’s sick in bed,' he announced in accents of extreme importance. 'He didn’t come home till awful late last night, and he was so frozen, his teeth knocked together. My mother says he burned like a fire all night, and she had to take little Harry in her bed, with her and papa, so’s David could sleep all alone. We all went downstairs in our bare feet this morning, and dressed ourselves in the kitchen, so David could sleep.'
'What is the matter with him? Did you have the doctor?'