“How am I to get there?” Eloise asked in dismay, and Mrs. Biggs replied, “It’ll be a chore, I guess, but you can do it.  I did when my ankle was bad.  I took some strong coffee, same as I brought you, had my foot done up, and slid downstairs, one at a time, with my lame laig straight out.  I can’t say it didn’t hurt, for it did, but I had to grin and bear it.  Christian Science nor mind cure wasn’t invented then, or I should of used ’em, and said my ankle wasn’t sprained.  There’s plenty of nice people believes ’em now.  You can try ’em on, and we’ll manage somehow.”

Eloise was appalled at the thought of going downstairs to meet people, and especially the young men from Crompton, clad in that spotted brown and white gown, with nothing to relieve its ugliness, not even a collar, for the one she had worn the previous day was past being worn again until it had been laundered.  She looked at her handkerchief.  That, too, was impossible.

“Mrs. Biggs,” she said at last, “have you a handkerchief you can loan me?”

“To be sure!  To be sure!  Half a dozen, if you like,” Mrs. Biggs answered, hurrying from the room, and soon returning with a handkerchief large enough for a dinner napkin.

It was coarse and half-cotton, but it was clean, and Eloise tied it around her neck, greatly to Mrs. Biggs’s surprise.

“Oh,” she said, “you wanted it for that?  Why not have a lace ruffle?  I’ll get one in a jiffy.”

Eloise declined the ruffle.  The handkerchief was bad enough, but a lace ruffle with that gown would have been worse.

“Now, I’ll call Tim to go in front and keep you from falling.  He is kind of awkward, but I’ll go behind and stiddy you, and you grit your teeth and put on the mind cure, and down we go,” Mrs. Biggs said, calling Tim, who came shambling up the stairs, and laughed aloud when he saw Eloise wrapped in his mother’s gown.

“Excuse me, I couldn’t help it; mother has made you into such a bundle,” he said good-humoredly, as he saw the pained look in Eloise’s face.  “I’ll get your trunk the next train, and you can have your own fixin’s.  What am I to do?”

This last was to his mother, who explained the way she had gone downstairs when she sprained her ankle twenty years ago come Christmas.

“She must sit down somehow on the top stair and slide down with one before her,—­that’s you,—­and one behind,—­that’s me,—­and she’s to put on the mind cure.  Miss Jenks says it does a sight of good.”

Tim looked at his mother and then at Eloise, whose pitiful face appealed to him strongly.

“Oh, go to grass,” he said, “with your mind cure!  It’s all rot!  I’ll carry her, if she will let me.  I could of done it last night as well as them fine fellows.”

He was a rough young boy of sixteen, with uncouth ways; but there was something in his face which drew Eloise to him, and when he said, “Shall I carry you?” she answered gladly, “Oh, yes, please.  I don’t think I have any mind to put on.”