"Well, as matters turned out, I saw her again that very same day. Poor Baby-Belle! She got tired of climbing fences and jumping ditches, and in one field she was chased by a bull; so when she came to the highway, she determined to walk on it for a while. And no _sooner_ had she started to do this than along came--who do you think?--Mrs. Brace-Gideon in her big, glittering barouche with its two big, glittering horses and the coachman and footman on the box. "Baby-Belle tried to scrunch herself invisible, she told me later, but oh, no, Mrs. Brace-Gideon spotted her with her bright, bold eagle eye and commanded the coachman to stop. "'Why, Baby-Belle Tuckertown, what are you doing so far from home?' Mrs. Brace-Gideon asked her. 'And all by yourself, too; why that's not proper! Climb right in, child; we will drive you home at once!' "Of course, Baby-Belle couldn't think of any way _not_ to climb in, so she had to. And it's my suspicion that she was greatly relieved. Running away from home is not the easy thing they claim it is in books. No, indeed it is not." "Was it the brook water that gave you typhoid?" Julian asked. "I'm very sure it was. Shortly afterwards, I began to feel ill and listless, and then _very_ ill, oh, dreadful, and it seemed to go on and on.... So there I was lying on my bed one day, burning up with fever--I was alone in the room for a few minutes for some reason--when I heard a strange sound at the window and there was Baby-Belle flinging her leg over the sill.... My room was on the second floor, but I didn't think about that; my fever gave me so many queer thoughts and dreams that nothing seemed queerer than anything else. "'Min?' Baby-Belle whispered to me, and I said: 'You better go away quick; I'm catching!' And Baby-Belle said: 'Pshaw, I don't give a hang. I've brought you that sea shell Uncle Ninian gave me; the one you always liked, remember? Here, take it.' "Well, at that moment I didn't really want the shell or anything else--except to be lying in a snow field at the North Pole maybe--but when she pushed it into my hand, it did feel cool, oh, how cool it felt, and I thanked her. Then we heard footsteps in the hall and Baby-Belle skedaddled out the window. (She had borrowed the painter's ladder.)