Within ten minutes, Theodora was heartily tired of her position as amateur groom. Miss Hulburt, always garrulously confidential, was pouring into the doctor's impatient ears all her theory of Phebe's temper and training. She was absorbed in her subject, but to the others the time crept heavily by. Allyn came around the corner of the house, and Theodora hailed him. "Come, Allyn; want to come and play go to ride with sister?" With childish clumsiness Allyn clambered into the buggy. For a time, he was content to jounce rapturously on the cushion and snap the buckle of the reins. Then he too wearied for change. "Make the horsey go, Teddy," he demanded. "Oh, no, Allyn; sister mustn't. We must wait for papa." "Make him go," Allyn persisted. Theodora hesitated. Like the immortal Toddie, Allyn's strength lay in his power of endless iteration. She foresaw a coming crisis in his temper, and, moreover, his wishes coincided with her own to a remarkable degree. Vigil was becoming uneasy, and a belated gadfly was making continued attacks upon her sensitive skin. Why not drive down the street and around the block, and shake off the annoying guest? "Will you sit quite still, Allyn, if sister will drive just a little, little way?" Allyn smiled rapturously. "Ess," he hissed. Theodora gave a hasty glance at the house, as she tightened the lines. "I know he'd think it was the best thing to do," she argued with her conscience. "Vigil is so uneasy she wouldn't stand much longer, and this will quiet her down. Besides, I've always been used to driving." The gadfly went too. Vigil was fretted by standing, and she quickened her pace. Before she quite realized the change, Theodora was being whirled down the street at a round trot. "Whoa!" she urged. "Whoa, Vigil! Sh-h-h!" But Vigil refused to _sh-h-h_. She felt an unfamiliar hand on the lines, and her sensitive mouth assured her that the hand was shaking a little. Accordingly, she dropped her ears back, gave an odd little kick with her hind legs, and swung round a corner with the carriage on two wheels behind her. "Allyn," Theodora said, when they had gone around another corner in the same uncertain fashion; "now you must mind sister and do just what she says." The girl's face was white to the lips; but her voice was steady and brave. "Climb over the back of the seat, lie down flat in the bottom of the carriage, and then roll out on the ground." "I don't want to," whined the child. "I wants to ride." "But you must, or sister won't take you again. You may be thrown out and hurt, if you don't mind sister." "It hurts to roll out," he argued. "No; not a bit." Theodora felt herself a heartless liar; but she had lost all control of Vigil, and she knew that this was the best chance of safety for her baby brother. "Now hold on tight. I don't believe you can climb over."