'I
have made _such_ a mistake!' she said, in an embarrassed way. 'I can
never forgive myself for it. I mistook one line for another, and the
one in Tim's hand means something entirely different from what I
thought it did. That poor little soul has been suffering all this time
solely on account of my ignorance!'
"Doctor Phelps smiled. 'When I was a lad,' he said, 'there was a
couplet in my grammar that I often had to parse, which ran in this
wise:
"'A little learning is a dangerous thing;
Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring!'"
"Tim's father came to-day. Doctor Phelps telegraphed for him
immediately after leaving here yesterday, and they have taken her away
to a sanitarium. Doctor Phelps said that she was not able to stand the
long journey home, and that her nervous condition was so serious that
she must have immediate attention.
"Elsie is inconsolable, although Doctor Phelps assures her that Tim
would undoubtedly have broken down before the close of the year, from
the mere strain of school life; she is such a delicate little thing."
"Just a month to-day since Tim left. It will be a full year before she
is well and strong again, Doctor Phelps says, and maybe longer. He was
invited to speak in the chapel, this morning, and I wish you could
have heard what he said on the influence of the imagination.
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