Just then they both started violently, for a double sound broke on their ears, a long-drawn shriek as of a child in pain, followed by Archie's voice, loud and remorseful,-- "Oh, by George!" An instant later, Theodora appeared on the landing, ejaculating,-- "Gracious me! I forgot her." "Theodora, what does this mean?" the doctor demanded breathlessly, as he rushed up the stairs. Then, at the open door, he paused in sheer amazement. In the middle of the floor stood Archie Holden, staring at the bed with a face devoid of all expression. Sitting up in the bed and staring back at him with a face of injured innocence and pain, was an unwholesome child of Keltic extraction and unneat exterior, with a dingy knitted hood in lieu of nightcap, and two chapped hands appearing from two vast gray sleeves. Archie appeared to think that it devolved upon him to explain the situation. "I'm sorry," he said meekly. "You see, I didn't turn up the gas at first, but I just sat down on the edge of the bed to take off my shoes. I didn't know this--this young person was here, and I suppose I sat on her. But really I can't imagine where she came from. I didn't bring her." "Theodora!" said the doctor, sternly. But Theodora had vanished, to hide her head from the sight of her protegee, and from the merriment shining in Archie's blue eyes. CHAPTER ELEVEN "Do you often do that kind of thing, Miss Teddy?" Theodora, with her hands full of books, was passing through the lower hall. At the sudden question, she glanced up to see Archie Holden leaning on the banisters and looking down at her. "What thing?" she asked. "Oh, adopting stray babies. You gave me a fine fright, last night." Theodora blushed. Then, as she met his merry eyes, she burst out laughing. "Wasn't it awful? I put the child to bed and promised her some supper, and then I forgot her." "And I sat on her," Archie supplemented. "I don't know which of us was the more astonished, she or I. What were you going to do with her?" "Why, you see," Theodora dropped her books on the seat by the staircase and settled herself beside them; "you see, it was my first experience with slumming." "With what?" "Don't you know? Or don't you have any slums in Montana? Everybody does it here, and it's beautiful." "What's the usual _modus operandi_?" "The what? Talk English, please." "How do you go at it?" Archie sat down on the top step, to talk at his ease. "Oh, they go to see poor people, and take them food and soap and madonnas and fumigate them." "The madonnas?" "No, the people. It does them ever so much good. Mrs. Farrington, Billy's mother, had a friend here that did it, and she told us all about it." "I begin to comprehend," Archie said gravely, as he looked down at the animated face below him. "And does it belong to the plan to bring them home and hide them in the guests' beds?" "How was I to know you were here?" Theodora demanded. "Didn't you take us all by surprise?"