“Anyway, we were both better by Sunday morning, for who wouldn’t have been better with a new white dress to wear and a leghorn hat with a wreath of daisies around the crown?
“But in church even my new clothes couldn’t help me. The sermon seemed very, very long, the air was hot and close, and I felt terribly sick. I wanted more than anything else in the world to take off my hat and lay my head in Mother’s gray silk lap, but of course I was much too big to do that. I looked across to the men’s side where Charlie sat beside Father, and there he was all slumped down in his seat, holding his head in his hands.
“Neither of us ate much dinner, but there were so many people eating with us that Mother didn’t notice. And right after dinner we went down to the surrey and climbed in, Charlie on the front seat, I on the back.
“We covered ourselves, heads and all, with the lap robes, and there we lay and slept the live-long afternoon, until Father came to hitch the horses up to go home.
“‘These youngsters must be all tired out,’ Father said when Mother and Aggie and Belle came out to get in the surrey. I raised my head up, but I was so dizzy I lay right down again, but not before Mother had seen me.
“‘Let me see in your throat, Sarah,’ she demanded, and then to Father she said solemnly, ‘I knew it! The second I saw her I knew it. Sarah has the measles.’ Father thought surely she must be mistaken, but she examined Charlie, and would you believe it? He had the measles, too.
I looked across to Charlie and he was holding his head in his hands
“On the way home, with my head in Mother’s lap and Charlie leaning on Belle, we told them all about going to the wrong house when we went to see Aunt Louisa, and the boy who had the measles, and everything.