"I don't think I could have gone another step if I had frozen on the bridge." The Princess bent to look in my face.

"Why, you poor child!" She exclaimed, "you're white as death! Where are you ill ?" I leaned on her shoulder, though ordinarily I would not have offered to touch her first, and murmured: "I am not ill, outdoors, only dull, sleepy, and freezing with the cold." "It was that window!" she exclaimed.

"I thought of it, but I trusted Laddie." That roused me a little.
"Oh Princess," I cried, "you mustn't blame Laddie! I knew it was too cold, but I wouldn't tell him, because if he put me down I couldn't see you, and we thought, but for your eyes being softer, you looked just like a cardinal." The Princess hugged me close and laughed merrily.

"You darling!" she cried.
Then she shook me up sharply: "Don't you dare go to sleep!" she said.
"I must take you home first." Once there she quieted my mother's alarm, put me to bed, drove three miles for Dr.Fenner and had me started nicely on the road to a month of lung fever, before she left.

In my delirium I spelled volumes; and the miracle of it was I never missed a word until I came to "Terra del Fuego," and there I covered my lips and stoutly insisted that it was the Princess' secret.
To keep me from that danger sleep on the road, she shook me up and asked about the spelling bee.