"You're nearer five than four now, honey. Let me button your nightgown, and lie down and try to go to sleep while mamma sings to you. Does your throat really hurt you?" "It feels as if it had teensy-weensy marbles in it. They came there when I woke up in the dark and thought that you were going away to-morrow." "Well, if your throat hurts you, of course mamma won't leave you. Open your mouth wide now so I can look at it." She lighted a candle while Harry, kneeling in the middle of his little bed, followed her with his blue eyes, which looked three times their usual size because of his flushed cheeks and his mounting excitement. His throat appeared slightly inflamed when she held the candle close to it, and after tucking him beneath the bed-clothes, she poured a little camphorated oil into a cup and heated it on the small alcohol lamp she kept in the nursery. "Mamma is going to put a nice bandage on your throat, and then she is going to lie down beside you and sing you to sleep," she said cheerfully, as she cut off a strip of flannel from an old petticoat and prepared to saturate it with the heated oil. "Will you stay here all night?" "All night, precious, if you'll be good and go fast asleep while I am singing." Holding tightly to her nightdress, Harry cuddled down between the pillows with a contented sigh. "Then I don't mind about the marbles in my throat," he said. "But mamma minds, and she wants to cure them before morning. Now lie very still while she wraps this good flannel bandage over the sore places." "I'll lie very still if you'll hold me, mamma." Blowing out the candle, she crept into the little bed beside him, and lay singing softly until his hands released their desperate grasp of her nightdress, and he slipped quietly off to sleep. Even then, remembering her promise, she did not go back to her bedroom until daylight. "I wonder what makes Harry so afraid of the dark?" she asked, when Oliver awoke and turned questioningly towards her. "He worked himself really sick last night just from pure nervousness. I had to put camphorated oil on his throat and chest, and lie beside him until morning. He is sleeping quietly now, but it simply frightens me to death when one of them complains of sore throat." "You've spoiled him, that's what's the matter," replied Oliver, yawning. "As long as you humour him, he'll never outgrow these night terrors." "But how can you tell whether the fright makes him sick or sickness brings on the fright? His throat was really red, there's no doubt about that, but I couldn't see last night that it was at all ulcerated." "He gives you more trouble than both the other children put together." "Well, he's a boy, and boys do give one more trouble. But, then, you have less patience with him, Oliver." "That's because he's a boy, and I like boys to show some pluck even when they are babies. Lucy and Jenny never raise these midnight rows whenever they awake in the dark."