Leah and Aaron listened to one of the most calming of these orators. The lecturer spoke with such feeling—and such stereopticon slides—that smallpox, scarlet fever, measles, and diphtheria seemed the "open sesame" to bliss unutterable, and the source of these talismans rather to be sought for diligently than shunned. "Didst hear?" Leah asked Aaron as they went home. "For a redness on the skin one may stay in bed for a week and rest."
"Ay, but one is sick," said Aaron sagely.
"Not if one goes where the gentleman said. One lies in bed for a week—three weeks—and there be ladies who wait on one, and one rests—all days one rests. And there be no twins. Think of it, Aaron! rest and no twins!"
A few days later she climbed home after a morning's shopping to find Algernon, heavy of eye and red of face, crouched near the locked door with a whimper in his voice and a card in his hand.
"I'm got somethin'," he announced, with the pride of the invalid.
"Where didst get it?" asked Leah, automatically; she was accustomed to brazen admission of guilt.
"Off of a boy at school."
"Thou wilt steal once too often," his sister admonished him. "Go now, confess to Miss Bailey, and return what thou hast taken."
"The boy has it too," retorted Algernon. "It's a sickness—a taking sickness; und comes a man und gives me a card und says I should come by my house; I'm sick."
Leah gazed on the card in despairing envy. She had hopefully searched her person for rash or redness, thinking thereby to achieve a ticket to that promised land where beautiful ladies—as the stereopticon had shown—sat graciously waving fans beside a smooth, white bed whereon one lay and rested: only rested: quiet day after quiet day. There had been no twins in her imaginings, yet here was Algernon already set upon the way; Algernon, who would be naughty in that blissful place, and who might even "talk sassy" to the beautiful ladies. Slow tears of disappointment grew under Leah's heavy lids and splashed upon the coveted ticket. And the doctor from the Board of Health, come to verify the more superficial examination of his colleague, misguidedly launched forth upon a resume of the reassuring lectures.