“My fingers are quite used to dirt,” said Anne, quietly, “and I’ve got a ‘First Aid to the Injured’ box full of cotton and plaster and bandages, and such like, for I fix all the cut fingers and baseball noses hereabout; there are five boys between here and the cross-roads that play, besides a fat girl and a medium-old lady who are having trouble in learning to ride wheels, so you see I’ve had experience. “If you will lance Waddles’s neck here, I’m sure I can take care of him, and father will pay for the visits. Or, if he doesn’t want to, there is my camera money,” she added half to herself. This same camera money was a family joke and seemed to be composed of magic coin, which, no matter how often it was spent, never seemed to grow less, but rather to increase. “You’d best let me take him to the hospital. You see, I’ve nothing to fasten him with, and he’ll have to be well bound, or he may upset the whole business and perhaps bite me to boot.” “I’m sure he will sit quite still, for he always has before; once the doctor took two stitches in his back because the milkman put barbed wire on his fence rails without Waddles’s knowing it. And then last spring when we were watching a man who didn’t know how to cast, splashing around the stream with a trout rod, he hooked poor Waddles, who was quite far up the bank behind him, and the hook had to be cut out, but Waddles never bit or squealed. He knows when he is ill, and that we want to help him; but if he went away from home to the hospital, he would be too sad to get well, even if you were good to him.” “She’s right,” said Baldy, taking a hand in the discussion. “You jes’ do the business. I’ll see you ain’t bit, and I’ll help Anne fix the little critter up as often as needs be ’til he’s cured. Ah, yes, he’ll pull through all right if he stays to home ’cause he’ll want ter; but if he’s fetched away, he jes’ won’t care.” So the deed was done, Waddles neither struggling nor crying, and great relief followed the point of the shining lance. “It’s different with medicines,” said Anne, as the sensitive nose quivered and sneezed when the doctor uncorked a bottle of pungent creolin to make a wash. “Waddles doesn’t understand about them, and he may not like the bandages, because it seems like being tied up; but if you’ll show me once, I know that Baldy and I can manage.” So every morning for a week, precisely at eight, when Baldy’s chores were finished, you might have seen Anne bring her “First Aid” box to the back stoop, and change Waddles’s bandages, dressing his hurt as carefully as the doctor himself could have done. Baldy had to help by holding the patient when the creolin wash was used; for Waddles, the house fourfoot, could bear pain, but Waddles, the rabbit hound, could not endure a strong odour without choking and rolling in the grass. In another week the bandages came off for good, and he had a bath, though he did not yet take any of his old interest in making his toilet. [Illustration]