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 “There will be cocoanut-pudding for dinner, Tommy, boy,” said Chloe, gayly, “and you must come. I must go in for a little while.”

She vanished in a delightful flutter.

Dr. Stamford tramped up hurriedly. He seized my pulse as though it were his own property that I had escaped with.

“You are the biggest fool outside of any asylum!” he said, angrily. “Why did you leave your bed? And the idiotic things you’ve been doing!—and no wonder, with your pulse going like a sledge-hammer.”

“Name some of them,” said I.

“Devoe sent for me,” said Stamford. “He saw you from his window go to old Campos’ store, chase him up the hill with his own yardstick, and then come back and make off with his biggest cocoanut.”

“It’s the little things that count, after all,” said I.

“It’s your little bed that counts with you just now,” said the doctor. “You come with me at once, or I’ll throw up the case. You’re as loony as a loon.”

So I got no cocoanut-pudding that evening, but I conceived a distrust as to the value of the Rh