"When you come to the table and say, Good-morning, and look at him without seeing him, I know he'd a lot rather you cuffed him." "What a dreadful word, Susie, and what an absurd idea!" Susie noted that Teacher's eyes brightened. "_You'll_ be goin' away, too, pretty soon, and I s'pose you'll be glad you will never see him again. But," she added dolefully, "ain't it awful the way people just meets and parts?" Dora was a long time finding that for which she was searching among the clothes hanging on a row of nails, and Susie, rolling her eyes in that direction, was sure, very sure, that she saw Teacher dab at her lashes with the frilly ruffle of a petticoat before she turned around. "When did he say he was going?" "He didn't say; but to-day or to-morrow, I should think." "If he cared so much because I am cool to him, he certainly would have asked me why I treated him so. But he didn't care enough to ask." Teacher's voice sounded queer even to herself, and she seemed intensely interested in buttoning her boots. "Pooh! I know why. It's because he thinks you like that Smith." "Smith!" "Yes, Smith." The jangle of Ling's triangle interrupted the fascinating conversation. "How perfectly foolish!" gasped Dora. "Not to Smith," Susie replied dryly, "nor to Mr. Ralston." Susie looked at the unoccupied chairs at the table as she and Dora seated themselves. Ralston's, Tubbs's, Smith's, and McArthur's chairs were vacant. "Looks like you're losin' your boarders fast, Ling," she remarked. "Good thing," Ling answered candidly. The Indian woman gulped her coffee, but refused the food which was passed to her. A strange faintness, accompanied by nausea, was creeping upon her. Her vision was blurred, and she saw Meeteetse Ed, at the opposite end of the table, as through a fog. She pushed back her chair and went into the living-room, swaying a little as she walked. A faint moan caught Susie's ear, and she hastened to her mother. The woman was lying on the floor by the bench where she sewed, her head pillowed on her rag-rug. "Mother! Why, what's the matter with your hand? It's swelled!" "I heap sick, Susie!" she moaned. "My arm aches me." "Look!" cried Susie, who had turned back her sleeve. "Her arm is black--a purple black, and it's swellin' up!" "Oh, I heap sick!" "What did you do to your arm, Mother? Did you have the bandage off?" "Yes, it come off, and I pin him up," said Ling, who was standing by. A paroxysm of pain seized the woman, and she writhed. "It looks exactly like a rattlesnake bite! I saw a fellow once that was bit in the ankle, and it swelled up and turned a color like that," declared Susie in horror. "Mother, you haven't been foolin' with snakes, or been bit?" The woman shook her head. "I no been bit," she groaned, and her eyes had in them the appealing look of a sick spaniel.