“To be more accurate, then, conjunctivitis. People have that; a great many people, once it gets started. It looks very bad and dangerous; but it isn’t if properly cared for. Only, it’s quite contagious. Therefore the Committee on Schools, with myself as acting executive, accomplished the temporary removal of those children from school.” “And then,” the Committee joyously took up the tale, “we went out and trailed the pink-eye.” “We did. We trailed it to its lair in School Number 14, and there we found one of the most dangerous creatures which civilization still allows to exist.” “In the school?” said Bettykin. “Oo-oo! What was it?” “It was a Rollertowl,” replied the doctor impressively and in a sonorous voice. “I never heard of it,” said the Cherub, awestruck. “What is it like?” “He means a roller-towel, goosie,” explained Julia. “A towel on a roller, that everybody wipes their hands and faces on.” “Exactly. And because everybody uses it, any contagious disease that anybody has, everybody is liable to catch. I’d as soon put a rattlesnake in a school as a roller-towel. In this case, half the grade where it was had conjunctivitis. But that isn’t the worst. There was one case of trachoma in the grade; a poor little Italian whose parents ignorantly sent her to an optician instead of an oculist. The optician treated her for an ordinary inflammation, and now she will lose the sight of one eye. Meantime, if any of the others have been infected by her, through that roller-towel, there will be trouble, for trachoma is a serious disease.” “Did you throw out the roller-towel?” asked Charley with a hopeful eye to a fray. “No. We got thrown out ourselves, didn’t we, Junkum?” “Pretty near,” corroborated Julia. “The principal told Dr. Strong that he guessed he could run his school himself and he didn’t need any interference by—by—what did he call us, Dr. Strong?” “Interlopers. No, Cherub, an interloper is no relation to an antelope. It was four days ago that we left that principal and went out and whistled for the Fool-killer. Yesterday, the principal came down with a rose-pink eye of his own; the Health Officer met him and ordered him into quarantine, and the terrible and ferocious Rollertowl is now writhing in its death-agonies on the ash-heap.” “What about other diseases?” asked Mrs. Clyde after a pause. “Nothing from me. The eye will report them itself quick enough. And as soon as your eye tells you that anything is the matter with it, you tell the oculist, and you’ll probably get along all right, as far as diseases go. It is not diseases that I have to worry about, as your Chinese-plan physician, so much as it is to see that you give your vision a fair chance. Let’s see. Charley, you’re the Committee on Air, aren’t you? Could you take on a little more work?” “Try me,” said the boy promptly.