A day or two later, as Hattie was sitting in her little wheel-chair on the veranda of Mrs. Applegate's house watching Charley-Joe hunting grasshoppers underneath the currant bushes, she was surprised by the sharp closing of the front gate. A huge man with one squint eye and a heavy, square-cut jaw was coming up the walk, followed by a strange-looking dog. Charley-Joe withdrew, swiftly to his particular hole under the veranda, moving rapidly, his body low to the ground, and taking an unnecessary number of very short steps. The little city-bred girl distinguished the visitor from a country man at once. Hattie had ideas of her own as to propriety, and so rose to her feet as Bennett came up, and after a moment's hesitation made him a little bow. Bennett at once gravely took off his cap. "Excuse me," he said as though Hattie were twenty-five instead of twelve. "Is Miss Searight at home?" "Oh," exclaimed Hattie, delighted, "do you know Miss Searight? She was my nurse when I was so sick--because you know I had hip disease and there was an operation. No, she's not here any more. She's gone away, gone back to the City." "Gone back to the City?" "Yes, three or four days ago. But I'm going to write to her this afternoon. Shall I say who called?" Then, without waiting for a reply, she added, "I guess I had better introduce myself. My name is Harriet Campbell, and my papa is Craig V. Campbell, of the Hercules Wrought Steel Company in the City. Won't you have a chair?" The little convalescent and the arctic explorer shook hands with great solemnity. "I'm so pleased to meet you," said Bennett. "I haven't a card, but my name is Ward Bennett--of the Freja expedition," he added. But, to his relief, the little girl had not heard of him. "Very well," she said, "I'll tell Miss Searight Mr. Bennett called." "No," he replied, hesitatingly, "no, you needn't do that." "Why, she won't answer my letter, you know," explained Hattie, "because she is afraid her letters would give me typhoid fever, that they might"--she continued carefully, hazarding a remembered phrase--"carry the contagion. You see she has gone to nurse a dreadful case of typhoid fever out at Medford, near the City, and we're so worried and anxious about her--papa and I. One nurse that had this case has died already and another one has caught the disease and is very sick, and Miss Searight, though she knew just how dangerous it was, would go, just like--like--" Hattie hesitated, then confused memories of her school reader coming to her, finished with "like Casabianca." "Oh," said Bennett, turning his head so as to fix her with his own good eye. "She has gone to nurse a typhoid fever patient, has she?" "Yes, and papa told me--" and Hattie became suddenly very grave, "that we might--might--oh, dear--never see her again." "Hum! Whereabouts is this place in Medford? She gave you her address; what is it?" Hattie told him, and he took himself abruptly away.