Just then the library door opened behind them, and Marie announced young Dr. Shumway.
"Right on time," said the President, consulting his watch, "and your patient is just now awake. Will you tell her, doctor? We have decided to take the chance, but think you will make a better job of breaking the news to her."
"Very well," replied the doctor promptly, not pausing to meet the other members of the family. "I'll go right on up."
So he mounted the stairs to the Flag Room, wondering how he should broach the subject to the small maid soon to become his patient, but she gave him no chance for speech, for the instant she saw him bending over her, she exclaimed, "I dreamed about you last night,—the queerest dream!"
"You did! Well now, isn't that strange! I dreamed about you, too."
"O, tell me your dream," she commanded, delighted at his words.
"You first, my girl. Then you shall hear mine."
"Well, I thought I was on a hard, hard bed in the middle of a great, big room, and all around the room were rows and rows of shelves, just like the pickle closet in our Parker cellar. They were empty at first, but just as I was beginning to wonder what they were all for, I noticed a funny little hump-backed man sitting in one corner, dangling his legs over the edge of the shelf, and when I asked him who he was, he said he was one of my naughties. I didn't know what he meant, so he 'xplained that he was the bad spirit inside of me, which painted Mr. Hardman's barn once when I got mad at him. Then all of a sudden, I saw that the shelves were full,—just plumb full of people. Some were little and ugly, like the hump-back, and some were big and beautiful. The big ones were the goodies I had done. There was the time I sang for the hand-organ man, and the time I gave my circus money to the miss'nary, and the time I took the sick monkey home, and the time I carried pansies to my Lilac Lady, and—oh, crowds of 'em. But I 'most believe there were more naughties than goodies like Faith's State Fair cake which I spoiled, and the faces I made at old Skinflint when he wouldn't let us pick raspberries and all the times I bothered Grandpa by giving away my own and other folks's junk. O, I could see them all piled up on those shelves, and I began to cry about it, when who should come into the room but you and what do you s'pose you did, Dr. Dick?"
"I haven't the faintest idea," he confessed. "Tell me quickly."