“If I were at home this morning,” she said, “I would be eating hot waffles and kidney hash.”
Suddenly she looked up. Judy was standing in the doorway.
“Molly,” she said, “I want my slipper.”
Molly took her hand and gently led her back to bed.
“Judy, would you like a cup of delicious, strong, hot coffee?” she asked, endeavoring to divert Judy’s quinine-charged senses.
“Very much, but the slipper——” Judy began to whimper like a child.
Molly hurried into the next room, found one of Nance’s slippers and gravely handed it to Judy, who grasped it carefully with both hands as if it were something very precious and brittle.
“When I gave her your slipper, Nance, I felt something like the old witch who had kidnapped the Queen’s infant and put a changeling in its place,” Molly observed later, in telling about this incident to Nance. “But there is nothing to do but humor her, I suppose, until the influence of the quinine wears off.”
“Where has she got it now?” asked Nance, ignoring Molly’s allusions to quinine.
“What? The changeling slipper? Under her pillow.”