serpent in the Eden already? Well, come on, tell the doctor all about it and then you'll feel better."
Dick sat forward in his chair to start the narration; but when he would have begun, the words failed to come and he only moistened his lips and shoved his hands deeper into his pockets and looked uncomfortable.
"What's the pilikia?" asked Mrs. Sands, grinning again her boyish grin. "You look as if you had been caught in the watermelon patch."
"Oh, Gee!" said Dick, "I can't tell you. It's so perfectly ridiculous that you'll laugh, you'll howl with glee; and that'll make me so mad that I'll want to chuck you over the rail into kingdom come."
"Well, if it's funny——" began Bert Sands.
"Of course it's funny!" fumed Dick; "That is, the most of it is funny, but—but at the end it's got an awful hurt in it. A hurt that just turns around in your mind like something with a barb to it, so that it's unbearable—it's unbearable!"
Mrs. Sands' face sobered. "Well now listen," she said; "Suppose that we forget it just for the moment, and talk over the matter that I came to see you about; and by that time perhaps we'll get a clue as to how to handle the thing with a barb, without scratching ourselves. I came to ask a favor of you."
"It's granted already," said Dick. "I'd rather do a favor for you than for anybody else that I know.
