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By Root 1000 0

without finding out anything, while Mrs. Floyd sat there and kept up a running harangue about mothers who run off with some man and leave other people to take care of their children. As a last resort she had rung Mrs. Biederhof, and while that lady told her which hospital Ray had been taken to, and one or two other things, her syrupy good wishes hadn't exactly put Mildred in a good humor. Now, after a dash to Los Angeles and a quick look at Ray, she was sitting with Bert, Veda, Mom, and Mr. Pierce at one end of the hospital corridor, waiting for the doctor, listening to Bert rehearse exactly what had happened: Ray had been dull Friday night, and then yesterday at the beach, when she seemed to be running a temperature, they had called Dr. Gale, and he had advised taking her to a hospital. Mom interrupted Bert and corrected: The doctor hadn't done no such a thing. He had ordered her home and they had taken her home. But when they got there with her the house was all locked up and they rang him again. It was then that he ordered her to a hospital, because there was no other place to take her. Mildred wanted to ask what was the matter with the Pierces' house, but made herself swallow it back.

Bert took up the story again: There was nothing serious the matter, just a case of grippe, not flu, as Mildred had been told. "That strip of adhesive on her lip don't mean a thing. They opened a little pimple she had, that's all." Mom took the floor again, making more insinuations, until Mildred said: "I don't know that it's any of your business where I was, or anybody else's."

Mom turned white, and sat bolt upright, but Mr. Pierce spoke quickly, and she sank back, her lips compressed. Then Mildred, after trying to keep quiet, went on: "I was at Lake Arrowhead, if you have to know. When some friends invited me up to their cottage by the lake, I didn't see why I was the one person on earth that had to stay home. Of course I should have. That I readily admit. But I didn't know at the time that I had a set of in-laws that couldn't even find a place for a sick child that had been left in their care. I'll certainly know better next time."

"I think Mother's perfectly right."

Up to now, Veda had been coldly neutral, but when she heard about the swank cottage by the lake, she knew exactly where she stood. Bert looked unhappy, and said nothing. Mr. Pierce had a solemn rebuke: "Mildred, everybody did the best they knew, and I don't see any need for personal remarks."

"Who started these personal remarks?"

Nobody had an answer for this, and for a time there was silence. Mildred had little appetite for the wrangle, for deep down in her heart she had a premonition that Ray was really sick. After an interminable time Dr. Gale arrived. He was a tall, stooped man who had been the family doctor ever since Veda was born. He took Mildred into the sickroom, looked at Ray, listened to the night nurse's whisper. Then he spoke reassuringly: "We get a lot of these cases, especially at this time of year. They shoot up a temperature, start running at the nose, refuse everything you give them to eat, and you'd think they were blowing up something really bad. Then next day they're out running around. Though I don't mind telling you I'm glad we've got her here instead of home. Even in a case of grippe you can't be too careful."

"I'm glad you opened that pimple. I meant to, day before yesterday—and then I forgot it."

"Well I'm glad you didn't open it. Those things, the rule is to let them strictly alone, especially on the upper lip. I didn't open it. I put that little strip over it to keep her fingers off it, that's all."

Mildred took Veda home, improvising a tale about the people who had stopped by Saturday and invited her up to the lake. She named no names, but made them quite rich and high-toned. She undressed, with the light out, before she remembered her pies. It was three o'clock before she got to bed, and she was exhausted.

All next day she had an unreasoning, hysterical sense of being deprived of something her whole nature craved: the right to