Part 12 (2/2)

Flaxie knew nothing of all this. Her cheeks burned, her eyes shone, and she kept saying there were a million lions and tigers in the bed; and where was the rat-trap?

”Do bring the rat-trap!” said she, plunging about in a fright. ”Oh, you don't hear, do you? There's a woman out in the other room eating peas,--eating, and eating, and eating. Why don't you stop her? Oh, you don't hear! Johnny Allen, run for a sponge and vinegar, and put it in auntie's ears, so she can hear!”

Milly laughed at these strange speeches till she heard Nancy say to Mrs.

Hunter, ”Crazy as a loon, ain't she? I'm afraid it's water on the brain.”

Then Milly, who did not understand Nancy's meaning, but was appalled by the tone, ran into the pantry, and cried behind the flour-barrel.

”If Flaxie Frizzle dies, I want to die too! She's the only twin cousin I've got in the world.”

In a short time, considering how far he had ridden, Uncle Ben came home, but without Dr. Pulsifer, who had gone away, and could not be there before to-morrow noon.

”I'm so disappointed,” said Aunt Charlotte, looking pale and ill enough herself to be in bed. ”But the poor little thing is asleep now, and perhaps she isn't so very sick after all. Do tell me if you think there's any danger of brain-fever?”

”Well, I think this,” replied Uncle Ben, leaning over the bed and taking a long look at the little patient; ”_I_ don't know what ails her! It may be diphtheria, and then again it may be common sore throat; but if she isn't better in the morning, we'll telegraph to her father, for a child that can turn yellow and pea-green, as she did last spring, is capable of almost anything.”

”That is true,” said Aunt Charlotte; ”one never knows what she is going to do next.” And then she looked at Flaxie, and sighed. It was wonderful what a power she had of keeping her friends in a worry, this little pink and white slip of a girl! Once she had fallen into a brook, and once into a well, beside falling sick times without number. Uncle Ben and Aunt Charlotte knew all this, but they did not happen to know that it was a very common thing for Flaxie to be crazy! It was just so with her brother Preston and her sister Ninny; they seldom had any little ailment like a bad cold without ”going out of their heads,” and n.o.body in the family minded it at all.

If Flaxie's mother had been at Hilltop, she would have sent Uncle Ben and Aunt Charlotte to bed; but as she was not there, and they didn't know any better, they sat up all night watching their queer little niece.

Rather a sorry ”Christmas eve” all around the house,--but a beautiful Christmas morning, and not a cloud in the sky. Flaxie woke as gay as a bird, without the least recollection of the horrors she had suffered in the night from tigers and tea-kettles.

”Wish you merry Christmas!” cried she to pale Aunt Charlotte, and sprang out of bed with poultices on her feet to go after her Christmas stocking.

”Well, is this the little girl they thought was so sick,” said Dr.

Pulsifer, when he arrived at noon, and found her and Milly lying on the rug, with a pair of twin dolls between them dressed just alike, and each with a fur cap on its head.

He felt Flaxie's pulse and looked at her tongue, and said he ”shouldn't waste any of his nice medicine on _her_.”

”But my cold isn't good at all, now honest; and my throat's a little sore--I guess,” said Flaxie, drawing a long face, and feeling rather ashamed not to be sick now, when the doctor had been sent for on purpose!

”Never mind! If you don't need me, your aunt does. What do you think of yourself, you little piece of mischief, running away in the night, and frightening people so that they are sick abed Christmas day?”

All Flaxie's good time was over in a minute. _Was_ auntie sick abed up-stairs? Was that why Flaxie hadn't seen her since morning?

”Oh, mayn't I go look at her?” said she, after the doctor had left. And Uncle Ben consented, thinking she wouldn't stay a minute.

”Oh, I'm so sorry! I do love you dearly,” cried penitent Flaxie, climbing upon the bed and cuddling close to the white auntie. ”_Did_ I make you sick? I didn't mean to; and I don't 'member anything about the tea-kettle.”

”There, there, dear, don't cry.”

”I oughtn't to stayed up-stairs yesterday in the cold,” went on Flaxie, determined to free her mind. ”That was the wickedest thing! But you were just as good as you could be, if you _did_ trim the church; and I'll never do so again!”

”Oh, hush, dear; you shake the bed.”

”I'm real bad in here, in my s-o-ul!” wailed Flaxie, squeezing her eyelids together tight, and laying her hand on her stomach. ”Why don't G.o.d make me beautiful inside o' my soul?”

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