Part 70

“It doesn’t look right,” announced the Cherub, after a moment’s contemplation. “Dr. Strong, how do you spell ‘diphtheria’?”

“I? Why, Toots, I spell it with a capital, but leave off the final x,” replied the Health Master cheerfully. “What kind of a game are you playing? Quarantining your dolls?”

“It isn’t a game.” Betty could be, on occasion, quite a self-contained young person.

“What is it, then, if I’m not prying too far into personal matters?”

“It’s for Eula Simms to put on her house.”

“The Simmses will be pleased,” remarked Julia.

“They ought to be,” said Betty complacently. “I don’t suppose they can afford a regular one like the one we put up when Charley had scarlet fever, two years ago. And Eula’s big sister’s got diphtheria,” she added quite casually.

“What’s that?” The Health Master straightened up sharply in his chair. “How do you know that, Twinkles?”

“Eula told me across the fence this morning. She’s excused from school. Three other houses on the street have got it, too. I’m going to make placards for them.”

“And do the work in play that the Health Department ought to be doing in the deadliest earnest! What on earth is Dr. Merritt thinking of?” And he went to the telephone to call up the Health Officer and find out.

“We’re due for a bad diphtheria year, too,” observed Grandma Sharpless, whose commentaries on practical matters, being always the boiled-down essence of first-hand observation, carried weight in the household. “I’ve noticed that it swings around about once in every five or six years. And it was six years ago we had that bad epidemic.”

“Then there is the influenza epidemic of last spring to consider,” said Mrs. Clyde. “Dr. Strong told us then that we’d have to pay for that for months. So, I suppose, the city is still in a weakened condition and easy soil for diphtheria or any other epidemic.”

“There’s measles already in our school,” said Julia. “That’ll help, too.”

“Why haven’t you reported it, Junkum?” asked her father. “You’re Chairman of the Committee on School Conditions of the Clyde Household Protective Association.”

“We only found out to-day,” said Bobs, “when they told us maybe school would close.”

“Three years I’ve been President of the Public Health League,” remarked Mr. Clyde with a wry face, “and nothing has happened. Now that I’m just about retiring I hope there isn’t going to be serious trouble. What does the Health Department say, Strong?” he inquired, turning as the Health Master entered.

“Something very wrong there. Merritt won’t talk over the ‘phone. Wants me to come down.”

“This evening?”

“Yes. He’s ill, himself, and badly worried. What do you think?”

“It looks like some skullduggery,” declared Mr. Clyde, borrowing one of his mother-in-law’s expressive words. “Is it possible that reports of diphtheria are being suppressed, and that is why the infected houses are not placarded?”

“If it is, we’re in for trouble. As I told you, when I undertook the Chinese job of keeping this household in health,” continued the Health Master, addressing the family, “I can’t reliably protect a family in a community which doesn’t protect itself. There are too many loopholes through which infection may penetrate. So the Protective Association, in self-defense, may have to spur up the city to its own defense. First, though, I’m going over the throats of this family and take cultures.”

“You don’t think,” began the mother anxiously, “that the children—”

“No; I don’t think they’ve got it. But the bacteriological analysis will show.”

“I hate to have it done,” said Mrs. Clyde, shuddering. “It seems so—so inviting of trouble.”

“Superstition,” said Dr. Strong, smiling. “Aren’t you just as anxious to find out that they haven’t got the infection as that they have? Come on, Bettykin; you’re first.” And, having prepared his material, he swabbed the throats of the whole company, after which he took the cultures with him to Dr. Merritt.

It was late when he returned, but he went direct to Mr. Clyde’s room.

“It’s worse than I thought, Clyde,” said he. “We’re in the first stage of a bad epidemic. The reports have been suppressed by Mullins, the Deputy Health Officer.”

“What did he do that for?”