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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Geoffrey Strong, by Laura E. Richards
+
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+Title: Geoffrey Strong
+
+Author: Laura E. Richards
+
+Release Date: September, 2005  [EBook #8877]
+[This file was first posted on August 19, 2003]
+
+Edition: 10
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: US-ASCII
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, GEOFFREY STRONG ***
+
+
+
+
+E-text prepared by Project Gutenberg Distributed Proofreaders
+
+
+
+GEOFFREY STRONG
+
+By
+
+Laura E. Richards
+
+Author of
+
+"Captain January," "Melody," "Marie," etc.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+  TO
+  Richard Sullivan,
+  KINDEST OF UNCLES, FRIENDS, AND CRITICS,
+  THIS STORY IS AFFECTIONATELY
+  DEDICATED
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+CHAPTER
+
+   I. THE TEMPLE OF VESTA
+
+  II. THE YOUNG DOCTOR
+
+ III. GARDEN FANCIES
+
+  IV. MOSTLY PROFESSIONAL
+
+   V. LETTER-WRITING AND HYSTERICS
+
+  VI. INFORMATION
+
+ VII. FESTIVITY
+
+VIII. REVELATION
+
+  IX. SIDE LIGHTS
+
+   X. OVER THE WAY
+
+  XI. BROKEN BONES
+
+ XII. CONVALESCENCE
+
+XIII. RECOVERY
+
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS.
+
+
+He paddled on in silence
+
+The young doctor glancing around saw all these things.
+
+He stood looking at her, his hand still on the hammock rope.
+
+"There he comes, full chisel!" cried Ithuriel Butters.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+
+THE TEMPLE OF VESTA
+
+"That's a pleasant looking house," said the young doctor. "What's
+the matter with my getting taken in there?"
+
+The old doctor checked his horse, and looked at the house with a
+smile.
+
+"Nothing in the world," he said, "except the small fact that they
+wouldn't take you."
+
+"Why not?" asked the young man, vivaciously. "Too rich? too proud?
+too young? too old? what's the matter with them?"
+
+The old doctor laughed outright this time. "You young firebrand!" he
+said. "Do you think you are going to take this village by storm?
+That house is the Temple of Vesta. It is inhabited by the Vestal
+Virgins, who tend the sacred fire, and do other things beside. You
+might as well ask to be taken into the meeting-house to board."
+
+"This is more attractive than the meetinghouse," said the young
+doctor. "This is one of the most attractive houses I ever saw."
+
+He looked at it earnestly, and as they drove along the elm-shaded
+street, he turned in his seat to look at it again.
+
+It certainly was an attractive house. Its front of bright clean red
+brick was perhaps too near the street; but the garden, whose tall
+lilac and syringa bushes waved over the top of the high wall, must,
+he thought, run back some way, and from the west windows there must
+be a glorious sea-view.
+
+The house looked both genteel and benevolent. The white stone steps
+and window-sills and the white fan over the door gave a certain
+effect of clean linen that was singularly pleasing. The young doctor,
+unlike Doctor Johnson, had a passion for clean linen. The knocker,
+too, was of the graceful long oval shape he liked, and burnished to
+the last point of perfection, and the shining windows were so placed
+as to give an air of cheerful interrogation to the whole.
+
+"I like that house!" said the young doctor again. "Tell me about the
+people!"
+
+Again the old doctor laughed. "I tell you they are the Vestal Virgins!"
+he repeated. "There are two of them, Miss Phoebe and Miss Vesta Blyth.
+Miss Phoebe is as good as gold, but something of a man-hater. She
+doesn't think much of the sex in general, but she is a good friend
+of mine, and she'll be good to you for my sake. Miss Vesta"--the
+young doctor, who was observant, noted a slight change in his hearty
+voice--"Vesta Blyth is a saint."
+
+"What kind of saint? invalid? bedridden? blind?"
+
+"No, no, no! saints don't all have to be bedridden. Vesta is a--you
+might call her Saint Placidia. Her life has been shadowed. She was
+once engaged--to a very worthy young man--thirty years ago. The day
+before the wedding he was drowned; sailboat capsized in a squall,
+just in the bay here. Since then she keeps a light burning in the
+back hall, looking over the water. That's why I call the house the
+Temple of Vesta."
+
+"Day and night?"
+
+"No, no! lights it at sunset every evening regularly. Sun dips,
+Vesta lights her lamp. Pretty? I think so."
+
+"Affecting, certainly!" said the young doctor. "And she has mourned
+her lover ever since?"
+
+The old doctor gave him a quaint look. "People don't mourn thirty
+years," he said, "unless their minds are diseased. Women mourn
+longer than men, of course, but ten years would be a long limit,
+even for a woman. Memory, of course, may last as long as life--sacred
+and tender memory,"--his voice dropped a little, and he passed his
+hand across his forehead,--"but not mourning. Vesta is a little
+pensive, a little silent; more habit than anything else now. A sweet
+woman; the sweetest--"
+
+The old doctor seemed to forget his companion, and flicked the old
+brown horse pensively, as they jogged along, saying no more.
+
+The young doctor waited a little before he put his next question.
+
+"The two ladies live alone always?"
+
+"Yes--no!" said the old doctor, coming out of his reverie. "There's
+Diploma Crotty, help, tyrant, governor-in-chief of the kitchen. Now
+and then she thinks they'd better have a visitor, and tells them so;
+but not very often, it upsets her kitchen. But here we are at the
+parsonage, and I'll take you in."
+
+The young doctor made his visit at the parsonage dutifully and
+carefully. He meant to make a good impression wherever he went. It
+was no such easy matter to take the place of the old doctor, who,
+after a lifetime of faithful and loving work, had been ordered off
+for a year's rest and travel; but the young doctor had plenty of
+courage, and meant to do his best. He answered evasively the inquiry
+of the minister's wife as to where he meant to board; and though he
+noted down carefully the addresses she gave him of nice motherly
+women who would keep his things in order, and have an eye to him in
+case he should be ailing, he did not intend to trouble these good
+ladies if he could help himself.
+
+"I want to live in that brick house!" he said to himself. "I'll have
+a try for it, anyhow. The old ladies can't be insulted by my telling
+them they have the best house in the village."
+
+After dinner he went for a walk, and strolled along the pleasant
+shady street. There were many good houses, for Elmerton was an old
+village. Vessels had come into her harbour in bygone days, and
+substantial merchant captains had built the comfortable, roomy
+mansions which stretched their ample fronts under the drooping elms,
+while their back windows looked out over the sea, breaking at the
+very foot of their garden walls. But there was no house that compared,
+in the young doctor's mind, with the Temple of Vesta. He was walking
+slowly past it, admiring the delicate tracery on the white
+window-sills, when the door opened, and a lady came out. The young
+doctor observed her as she came down the steps; it was his habit to
+observe everything. The lady was past sixty, tall and erect, and
+walked stiffly.
+
+"Rheumatic!" said the young doctor, and ran over in his mind certain
+remedies which he had found effective in rheumatism.
+
+She was dressed in sober gray silk, made in the fashion of thirty
+years before, and carried an ancient parasol with a deep silk fringe.
+As she reached the sidewalk she dropped her handkerchief. Standing
+still a moment, she regarded it with grave displeasure, then tried
+to take it up on the point of her parasol. In an instant the young
+doctor had crossed the street, picked up the handkerchief, and
+offered it to her with a bow and a pleasant smile.
+
+"I thank you, sir!" said Miss Phoebe Blyth. "You are extremely
+obliging."
+
+"Don't mention it, please!" said the young doctor. "It was a pleasure.
+Have I the honour of speaking to Miss Blyth? I am Doctor Strong.
+Doctor Stedman may have spoken to you of me."
+
+"He has indeed done so!" said Miss Phoebe; and she held out her
+silk-gloved hand with dignified cordiality. "I am glad to make your
+acquaintance, sir. I shall hope to have the pleasure of welcoming
+you at my house at an early date."
+
+"Thank you! I shall be most happy. May I walk along with you, as we
+seem to be going the same way? I have been admiring your house so
+very much, Miss Blyth. It is the finest specimen of its kind I have
+ever seen. How fine that tracery is over the windows; and how seldom
+you see a fan so graceful as that! Should you object to my making a
+sketch of it some day? I'm very much interested in Colonial houses."
+
+A faint red crept into Miss Phoebe's cheek; it was one of her dreams
+to have an oil-painting of her house. The young doctor had found a
+joint in her harness.
+
+"I should be indeed pleased--" she began; and, being slightly
+fluttered, she dropped her handkerchief again, and again the young
+doctor picked it up and handed it to her.
+
+"I am distressed!" said Miss Phoebe. "I am--somewhat hampered by
+rheumatism, Doctor Strong. It is not uncommon in persons of middle
+age."
+
+"No, indeed! My mother--I mean my aunt--younger sister of my mother's--
+used to suffer terribly with rheumatism. I was fortunate enough to
+be able to relieve her a good deal. If you would like to try the
+prescription, Miss Blyth, it is entirely at your service. Not
+professionally, please understand, not professionally; a mere
+neighbourly attention. I hope we shall be neighbours. Don't mention
+it, please don't, because I shall be so glad, you know. Besides--you
+have a little look of my--aunt; she has very regular features."
+
+Miss Phoebe thanked him with a rather tremulous dignity; he was a
+most courteous and attractive young man, but so impetuous, that she
+felt a disturbance of her cool blood. It was singular, though, how
+little dear Doctor Stedman had been able to do for her rheumatism,
+for as many years as he had been attending her. Perhaps newer methods--
+it must be confessed that Doctor Stedman was growing old.
+
+"Where do you intend to lodge, Doctor Strong?" she asked, by way of
+changing the subject gracefully.
+
+The young doctor did not know, was quite at a loss.
+
+"There is only one house that I want to lodge in!" he said, and his
+bold face had grown suddenly timid, like a schoolboy's. "That is, of
+course there are plenty of good houses in the village, Miss Blyth,
+excellent houses, and excellent people in them, I have no doubt; but--
+well, there is only one house for me. You know what house I mean,
+Miss Blyth, because you know how one can feel about a really fine
+house. The moment I saw it I said, 'That is the house for me!' But
+Doctor Stedman said there was no possible chance of my getting taken
+in there."
+
+"I really do not know how Doctor Stedman should speak with authority
+on the subject!" said Miss Phoebe Blyth.
+
+Young doctor! young doctor! is this the way you are going to comport
+yourself in the village of Elmerton? If so, there will be
+flutterings indeed in the dove-cotes. Before night the whole village
+knew that the young doctor was going to board with the Blyth girls!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+
+THE YOUNG DOCTOR
+
+"And he certainly is a remarkable young man!" said Miss Phoebe Blyth.
+"Is he not, Sister Vesta?"
+
+Miss Vesta came out of her reverie; not with a start,--she never
+started,--but with the quiet awakening, like that of a baby in the
+morning, that was peculiar to her.
+
+"Yes! oh, yes!" she said. "I consider him so. I think his coming
+providential."
+
+"How so?" asked the visitor. There was a slight acidity in her tone,
+for Mrs. Weight was one of the motherly persons mentioned by the
+minister's wife, and had looked forward to caring for the young
+doctor herself. With her four children, all croupy, it would have
+been convenient to have a physician in the house, and as the wife of
+the senior deacon, what could be more proper?
+
+"I must say he doesn't look remarkable," she added; "but the
+light-complected seldom do, to my mind."
+
+"It is years," said Miss Vesta, "since Sister Phoebe has suffered so
+little with her rheumatism. Doctor Strong understands her
+constitution as no one else ever has done, not even dear Doctor
+Stedman. Sister Phoebe can stoop down now like a girl; can't you,
+Sister Phoebe? It is a long time since she has been able to stoop
+down."
+
+Miss Vesta's soft white face glowed with pleasure; it was a gentle
+glow, like that at the heart of certain white roses.
+
+Mrs. Weight showed little enthusiasm.
+
+"I never have rheumatism!" she said, briefly. "I've always wore gold
+beads. If you'd have tried gold beads, Phoebe, or a few raisins in
+your pocket, it's my belief you'd never have had all this trouble."
+
+It was now Miss Phoebe's turn to colour, but hers was the hard red
+of a winter pear.
+
+"I am not superstitious, Anna Maria," she said. "Doctor Strong
+considers gold beads for rheumatism absurd, and I fully agree with
+him. As for raisins in the pocket, that is nonsense, of course."
+
+"It's best to be sure of your facts before reflecting upon other
+folks' statements!" said Mrs. Weight, with dignity. "I know whereof
+I speak, Phoebe. Father Weight is ninety years old this very month,
+and he has carried raisins for forty years, and never had a twinge
+of rheumatism in all that time. The same raisins, too; they have
+hardened into stone, as you may say, with what they have absorbed. I
+don't need to see things clearer than that."
+
+"H'm!" said Miss Phoebe, with the suspicion of a sniff. "Did he ever
+have it before?"
+
+"I wasn't acquainted with him before," said Mrs. Weight, stiffly.
+
+There was a pause; then the visitor went on, dropping her voice with
+a certain mystery. "You may talk of superstition, Phoebe, but I must
+say I'd sooner be what some folks call superstitious than have no
+belief at all. I don't wish to reflect upon any person, but I must
+say that, in my opinion, Doctor Strong is little better than an
+infidel. To see a perishing human creature set himself up against
+the Ordering of Providence is a thing I am sorry to meet with in
+_this_ parish."
+
+"Has Doctor Strong set himself against Providence?" asked Miss Phoebe,
+her back very rigid, her knitting-needles pointed in stern
+interrogation.
+
+"You shall judge for yourselves, girls!" Mrs. Weight spoke with
+unction. "At the same time, I wish it to be understood that what I
+say is for this room only; I am not one to spread abroad. Well! it
+has never been doubted, to _my_ knowledge, that the lower animals
+are permitted to absorb diseases from children, who have immortal
+souls to save. Even Doctor Stedman, who is advanced enough in all
+conscience, never denied that in _my_ hearing. Well! Mrs. Ezra Sloper--
+I don't know whether you are acquainted with her, girls; I have my
+butter of her. She lives out on the Saugo Road; a most respectable
+woman. She has a child with a hump back; fell when it was a baby,
+and never got over it. I found she wasn't doing anything for the
+child,--nice little boy, four years old; hump growing right out of
+his shoulders. I said to her, 'Susan,' I said, 'you want to get a
+little dog, and let it sleep with that child, and let the child play
+with it all he can, and get real attached to it. If anything will
+cure the child, that will.'
+
+"She said, 'Mis' Weight,' she said, 'I'll do it!' and she did. She
+thanked me, too, as grateful as ever I was thanked. Well, girls,"--
+Mrs. Weight leaned forward, her hands on her knees, and spoke
+slowly and impressively,--"as true as I sit here, in three months'
+time that dog was humpbacked, and growing more so every day."
+
+She paused, drawing a long breath of triumph, and looked from one to
+the other of her hearers.
+
+"Well!" said Miss Phoebe, dryly. "Did the child get well? And where
+does Doctor Strong's infidelity come in?"
+
+"The child _would_ have got well," said Mrs. Weight, with tragic
+emphasis. "The child might be well, or near it, this living day of
+time, if the Ordering of Providence had not been interfered with.
+The child had a spell of stomach trouble, and Doctor Strong was sent
+for. He ordered the dog out of the house; said it had fleas, and
+sore eyes, and I don't know what. Susan Sloper is a weak woman, and
+she gave in, and that child goes humpbacked to its grave. I hope
+Doctor Strong is prepared to answer for it at the Last Day."
+
+Miss Phoebe laid down her knitting-needles; but before she could
+reply, Doctor Strong himself came in, bringing the breeze with him.
+
+"How do you do, Mrs. Weight?" he said, heartily. "How is Billy?
+croupy again? Does he go out every day? Do you keep his window open
+at night, and give him a cold bath every morning? Fresh air and
+bathing are absolutely necessary, you know, with that tendency. Have
+you taken off all that load of flannel?"
+
+Mrs. Weight muttered something about supper-time, and fled before
+the questioner. The young doctor turned to his hostess, with the
+quick, merry smile he had. "I had to send her away!" he said.
+"You are flushed, Miss Blyth, and Miss Vesta is tired. Yes, you are,
+Miss Vesta; what is the use of denying it?"
+
+He placed a cushion behind Miss Vesta, and she nestled against it
+with a little comfortable sigh. She looked at the young doctor kindly,
+and he returned the look with one of frank affection.
+
+"Your mother must have had a sight of comfort with you," said
+Miss Vesta. "You are a home boy, any one can see that."
+
+"I know when I am well off!" said the young doctor.
+
+Geoffrey Strong certainly was well off. In some singular way, which
+no one professed wholly to understand, he had won the confidence of
+both the "Blyth girls," who were usually considered the most
+exclusive and "stand-offish" people in Elmerton. He made no secret
+of being in love with Miss Vesta. He declared that no one could see
+her without being in love with her. "Because you are so lovely, you
+know!" he said to her half a dozen times a day. The remark never
+failed to call up a soft blush, and a gentle "Don't, I pray you, my
+dear young friend; you shock me!"
+
+"But I like to shock you," the young doctor would reply. "You look
+prettiest when you are shocked." And then Miss Vesta would shake her
+pretty white curls (she was not more than sixty, but her hair had
+been gray since her youth), and say that if he went on so she must
+really call Sister Phoebe; and Master Geoffrey would go off laughing.
+
+He did not make love to Miss Phoebe, but was none the less intimate
+with her in frank comradeship. Rheumatism was their first bond.
+Doctor Strong meant to make rather a specialty of rheumatism and
+kindred complaints, and studied Miss Phoebe's case with ardour.
+Every new symptom was received with kindling eye and eager
+questionings. It was worst in her back this morning? So! now how
+would she describe the pain? Was it acute, darting, piercing? No?
+Dull, then! Would she call it grinding, boring, pressing? Ah! that
+was most interesting. And for other symptoms--yes! yes! that
+naturally followed; he should have expected that.
+
+"In fact, Miss Blyth, you really are a magnificent case!" and the
+young doctor glowed with enthusiasm. (This was when he first came to
+live in the Temple of Vesta.) "I mean to relieve your suffering;
+I'll put every inch there is of me into it. But, meantime, there
+ought to be some consolation in the knowledge that you are a most
+beautiful and interesting case."
+
+What woman,--I will go farther,--what human being could withstand
+this? Miss Phoebe was a firm woman, but she was clay in the hands
+of the young doctor,--the more so that he certainly did help her
+rheumatism wonderfully.
+
+More than this, their views ran together in other directions. Both
+disapproved of matrimony, not in the abstract, but in the concrete
+and personal view. They had long talks together on the subject,
+after Miss Vesta had gone to bed, sitting in the quaint parlour,
+which both considered the pleasantest room in the world. The young
+doctor, tongs in hand (he was allowed to pick up the brands and to
+poke the fire, a fire only less sacred than that of Miss Vesta's lamp),
+would hold forth at length, to the great edification of Miss Phoebe,
+as she sat by her little work-table knitting complacently.
+
+"It's all right for most men," he would say. "It steadies them, and
+does them good in a hundred ways. Oh, yes, I approve highly of
+marriage, as I am sure you do, Miss Blyth; but not for a physician,
+at least a young physician. A young physician must be able to give
+his whole thought, his whole being, so to speak, to his profession.
+There's too much of it for him to divide himself up. Why, take a
+single specialty; take rheumatism. If I gave my lifetime, or twenty
+lifetimes, to the study of that one malady, I should not begin to
+learn the A B C of it."
+
+"One learns a good deal when one has it!" said poor Miss Phoebe.
+
+"Yes, of course, and I am speaking the simple truth when I say that
+I wish I could have it for you, Miss Blyth. I should have--it would
+be most instructive, most illuminating. Some day we shall have all
+that regulated, and medical students will go through courses of
+disease as well as of study. I look forward to that, though it will
+hardly come in my time. Rheumatism and kindred diseases, say two
+terms; fever, two terms--no, three, for you would want to take in
+yellow and typhus, as well as ordinary typhoid. Cholera--well, of
+course there would be difficulties, but you see the principle. Well,
+but we were talking about marriage. Now, you see, with all these new
+worlds opening before him, the physician cannot possibly be thinking
+of falling in love--"
+
+Miss Phoebe blinked, and coloured slightly. She sometimes wished
+Doctor Strong would not use such forcible language.
+
+"Of falling in love and marrying. In common justice to his wife, he
+has no business to marry her; I mean, of course, the person who
+might be his wife. Up all night, driving about the country all day,--
+no woman ought to be asked to share such a life. In fact, the one
+reason that might justify a physician in marrying--and I admit it
+might be a powerful one--would be where it afforded special
+facilities for the study of disease. An obscure and complicated case
+of neurasthenia, now,--but these things are hardly practicable;
+besides, a man would have to be a Mormon. No, no, let lawyers marry
+young; business men, parsons,--especially parsons, because they need
+filling out as a rule,--but not doctors."
+
+The young doctor paused, and gave his whole vigorous mind to the
+fire for a moment. It was in a precarious condition, and the brands
+had to be built up in careful and precise fashion, with red coals
+tucked in neatly here and there. Then he took the bellows in hand,
+and blew steadily and critically, with keen eyes bent on the
+smouldering brands. A few seconds of breathless waiting, and a jet
+of yellow flame sprang up, faltered, died out, sprang up again, and
+crept flickering in and out among the brands powdered white with
+ashes. Now it was a strong, leaping flame, and all the room shone
+out in its light; the ancient Turkey carpet, with its soft blending
+of every colour into a harmonious no-colour; the quaint portraits,
+like court-cards in tarnished gilt frames; the teak-wood chairs and
+sofas, with their delicate spindle-legs, and backs inlaid with
+sandalwood; Miss Phoebe's work-table, with its bag of faded crimson
+damask, and Miss Phoebe herself, pleasant to look upon in her
+dove-coloured cashmere gown, with her kerchief of soft net.
+
+[Illustration: The young doctor glancing around saw all these things.]
+
+The young doctor, glancing around, saw all these things in the light
+of his newly-resuscitated fire; and seeing, gave a little sigh of
+comfort, and laying down the bellows, leaned back in his chair again.
+
+"You were going to say something, Miss Blyth?" he said, in his
+eager way. "Please go on! I had to save the fire, don't you know? it
+was on its last legs--coals, I should say. Please go on, won't you?"
+
+Miss Phoebe coughed. She had been brought up not to use the word
+"leg" freely; "limb" had been considered more elegant, as well as--
+but medical men, no doubt, took a broader view of these matters.
+
+"I was merely about to remark," she said, with dignity, "that in
+many ways my views on this subject coincide with yours, Doctor Strong.
+I have the highest respect for--a--matrimony; it is a holy estate,
+and the daughter of my honoured parents could ill afford to think
+lightly of it; yet in a great many cases I own it appears to me a
+sad waste of time and energy. I have noted in my reading, both
+secular and religious, that though the married state is called holy,
+the term 'blessed' is reserved for a single life. Women of clinging
+nature, or those with few interests, doubtless do well to marry, a
+suitable partner being provided; but for a person with the full use
+of her faculties, and with rational occupation more than sufficient
+to fill her time, I admit I am unable to conceive the attraction of
+it. I speak for myself; my sister Vesta has other views. My sister
+Vesta had a disappointment in early life. From my point of view, she
+would have been far better off without the unfortunate attachment
+which--though to a very worthy person--terminated so sadly. But my
+sister is not of my opinion. She has a clinging, affectionate nature,
+my sister Vesta."
+
+"She's an angel!" said Doctor Strong.
+
+"You are right, my friend, you are very right!" said Miss Phoebe;
+and her cap strings trembled with affection. "There is an angelic
+quality, surely, in my sister Vesta. She might have been happy--I
+trust she would have been--if Providence had been pleased to call
+her to the married estate. But for me, Doctor Strong, no! I have
+always said, and I shall always say, while I have the use of my
+faculties--no! I thank you for the honour you do me; I appreciate
+the sentiments to which you have given utterance; but I can never be
+yours."
+
+To any third party who had seen Miss Phoebe, drawn up erect in her
+chair, uttering these words with chiselled majesty, and Doctor Strong,
+bellows in hand, his bright eyes fixed upon her, receiving them with
+kindling attention, it might certainly have appeared as if he had
+been making her an offer of marriage; but the thought would have
+been momentary, for when the good lady ceased, the young doctor
+chimed in heartily:
+
+"Quite right! quite right, I'm sure, Miss Blyth. He'd be absurd to
+think of such a thing, you know; the idea of your wasting your time!
+That's what I say to fellows; 'How can you waste your time, when
+you'll be dead before you know it anyhow, and not have had time to
+look about you, much less learn anything?' No, sir,--I beg your
+pardon, ma'am! A single life for me. My own time, my own will, and
+my own way!"
+
+Miss Phoebe looked at him with very kind eyes.
+
+"Doctor Strong," she said, "I think--it is no light thing for me to
+say, holding the convictions I do--but I think you are worthy of
+single blessedness!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+
+GARDEN FANCIES
+
+Miss Vesta was trimming her lamp. That meant, in this early summer
+season, that it was after seven o'clock. The little lady stood at
+the window in the upper hall. It was a broad window, with a low
+round arch, looking out on the garden and the sea beyond it. A
+bracket was fastened to the sill, and on this bracket stood the lamp
+that Miss Vesta was trimming. (It was against all fitness, as
+Miss Phoebe said, that a lamp should be trimmed at this hour. Every
+other lamp in the house was in perfect order by nine o'clock in the
+morning; but it was Miss Vesta's fancy to trim this lamp in the
+evening, and Miss Phoebe made a point of indulging her sister's
+fancies when she conscientiously could.)
+
+It was a brass lamp of quaint pattern, and the brass shone so that
+several Miss Vestas, with faces curiously distorted, looked out at
+the real one, as she daintily brushed off the burnt wicking, and,
+after filling and lighting the lamp, replaced the brilliantly
+polished chimney. She watched the flame as it crept along the wick;
+then, when it burned steady and clear, she folded her hands with a
+little contented gesture, and looked out of the window.
+
+The sun had set. The sea on which Miss Vesta looked was a water of
+gold, shimmering here and there into opal; only where it broke on
+the shingle at the garden foot, the water was its usual colour of a
+chrysophrase, with a rim of ivory where it touched the shore. The
+window was open, and a light breeze blew from the water; blew across
+the garden, and brought with it scents of lilac, syringa, and June
+roses. It was a pleasant hour, and Miss Vesta was well content. She
+liked even better the later evening, when the glow would fade from
+the west, and her lamp would shed its own path of gold across the
+water; but this was pleasant enough.
+
+"It is a very sightly evening!" said Miss Vesta, in the soft
+half-voice in which she often talked to herself. "Good Lord, I
+beseech thee, protect all souls at sea this night; for Jesus
+Christ's sake; amen!"
+
+This was the prayer that Miss Vesta had offered every evening for
+thirty years. As often as she repeated it, the sea before her eyes
+changed, and she saw a stretch of black tossing water, with
+foam-crests that the lightning turned to pale fire; a sail drove
+across her window, dipped, and disappeared. Miss Vesta closed her
+eyes.
+
+But as the old doctor said, people do not mourn for thirty years;
+when she opened her eyes, they were grave, but serene. "It is a very
+sightly evening!" she repeated. She leaned out of the window, and
+drew in long breaths of sweetness. Presently the sweetness was
+crossed by a whiff of a different fragrance, pungent, aromatic,--the
+fragrance of tobacco. Doctor Strong was smoking his evening cigar in
+the garden. He would not have thought of smoking in the house, even
+if Miss Phoebe would have allowed it; he smoked as he rode on his
+morning round, and he took his evening cigar, as now, in the garden.
+Miss Vesta saw him now, in the growing dusk, striding up and down;
+not hastily, but with energy and determination in every stride. Her
+eyes dwelt upon him affectionately; she had grown very fond of him.
+It was delightful to her to have this young, vigorous creature in the
+house, fairly electric with life and joy and strength; she felt
+younger every time she saw him. He was good to look at, too, though
+no one would have called him a beauty. Tall and well-made, his head
+properly set on shoulders that were perhaps the least bit too square;
+his fair hair cropped close, in hope of destroying the curl that
+would still creep into it in spite of him; his hazel eyes as bright
+as eyes could be, his skin healthy red and brown,--yes, the young
+doctor was good to look at. So Miss Vesta thought. There was a
+little look, too--it could hardly be called a resemblance--yet he
+reminded her somehow--Miss Vesta's face changed from a white to a
+pink rose, and she said, softly, "If I had had a son, he might have
+looked like this. The Lord be with him and give him grace!"
+
+As Miss Vesta watched him, Geoffrey Strong stopped to examine
+something in one of the borders; stooped, hands on knees, and
+scrutinised a certain plant; then, glancing upward as he
+straightened himself, saw Miss Vesta at the window looking down at
+him.
+
+"Hurrah!" he cried. "Come down, Miss Vesta, won't you, please? you
+are the very person I want. I want to show you something."
+
+"Surely!" said Miss Vesta. "I will be with you in a moment, Doctor
+Strong; only let me get a head-covering from my room."
+
+When she had left the window, Geoffrey was almost sorry he had
+called her; she made such a pretty picture standing there, framed in
+the broad window, the evening light falling softly on her soft face
+and silver hair. It was so nice of her to wear white in the evening!
+Why didn't old ladies always wear white? when they were pretty, he
+added, reflecting that Miss Phoebe in white would be an alarming
+vision. His mind still on Miss Vesta, he quoted half aloud:
+
+  "A still, sweet, placid, moonlight face,
+    And slightly nonchalant,
+  Which seems to hold a middle place
+    Between one's love and aunt."
+
+"I wish you were my aunt!" he exclaimed, abruptly, when Miss Vesta
+appeared a few minutes later, with a screen of delicate white wool
+over her head and shoulders.
+
+"Is that what you wished to say to me?" asked Miss Vesta, somewhat
+bewildered.
+
+"No! oh, no! I was only thinking what a perfect aunt you would make.
+No, I wanted to show you something; a line out of Browning,
+illustrated in life; one of my favourite lines. See here, Miss Vesta!"
+
+Miss Vesta looked.
+
+"I see nothing," she began. "Oh, yes, a miller! Is that it, Doctor
+Strong? Quite a curious miller. The study of insect life is no doubt--"
+
+"A moth! don't you see?" cried the young doctor. "On the phlox, the
+white phlox."
+
+  "'And here she paused in her gracious talk
+  To point me a moth on the milk-white phlox.'"
+
+
+"Don't you remember, in the 'Garden Fancies?'"
+
+But Miss Vesta did not remember.
+
+Didn't she know Browning?
+
+She confessed that she did not. She had fancied that he was not quite--
+she hardly thought that ladies did read his works to any extent.
+"Cowper was my favourite poet in my youth," she said, "and I was
+very fond of Mrs. Hemans and Mrs. Barbauld. Their poetry is at once
+elegant and elevated in tone and spirit. I hope you agree with me,
+Doctor Strong?"
+
+"I don't know!" said Geoffrey, "I never read 'em. But Shelley,
+Miss Vesta! you love Shelley, I'm sure? He would have loved you so,
+you know."
+
+Miss Vesta's quiet face showed a little trouble. "Mr. Shelley's
+poetry," she said, hesitatingly, "is very beautiful. He was--some
+one I once knew was devoted to Mr. Shelley's poetry. He--used to
+read it to me. But Sister Phoebe thought Mr. Shelley's religious
+views were--a--not what one would wish, and she objected to my
+following the study."
+
+"He wrote about moths, too," said Geoffrey, abstractedly. "The
+desire of the moth for the star, you know. Those things make you
+feel queer when they come to you out here, with all these lights and
+dusks and smells. Now I wonder why!"
+
+Miss Vesta looked at him kindly. "Perhaps there is some tender
+association," she said, gently, "such as is natural at your age, my
+dear young friend."
+
+"Not an association!" said Geoffrey, stoutly. "Never had one in my
+life. It's only in a general way. These things stir one up, somehow;
+it's a form of mental intoxication. Do you think a man could get
+drunk on sunset and phlox, Miss Vesta?"
+
+"Oh, I trust not, I trust not!" said Miss Vesta, hurriedly, and she
+made haste to change the subject. She as well as her sister found
+the young doctor's expressions overstrong at times, yet she loved
+the lad.
+
+"The roses are at their sweetest now," she said, leading the
+conversation gently away from the too passionate white phlox, on
+which the moth was still waving its wings drowsily. "This black
+damask is considered very fine, but I love the old-fashioned June
+roses best."
+
+"'She loves you, noble roses, I know!'" said Geoffrey, who certainly
+was not himself to-night. "This one is exactly like you, Miss Vesta.
+Look at it; just the colour of ivory with a little sunset mixed in.
+Now you know what you look like."
+
+"Oh, hush, my dear young friend!" said Miss Vesta. "You must not--
+really, you know--talk in this way. But--it is curious that you
+should have noticed that particular rose; it--it is the kind I used
+to wear when I was young."
+
+She looked up at the lamp in the window. Geoffrey's eyes followed
+hers. Involuntarily he laid his hand on hers. "Dear Miss Vesta!" he
+said, and his strong, hearty voice could be very gentle. "Miss Blyth
+told me. Does it still hurt, dear lady?"
+
+Miss Vesta's breath fluttered for a moment, but it was only a moment.
+Her soft white fingers, cool as rose-leaves, returned the pressure
+of his affectionately. "No, my--my dear," she said. "It does not hurt--
+now. There is no pain now, only memory; blessed, blessed memory. He--
+there is something--you remind me of him a little, Doctor Geoffrey."
+
+They stood silent, the young man and the old woman, hand in hand in
+the soft evening. The splendour in the west died out, and soft
+clouds of gray and purple brooded like wings over the sea. The water
+deepened from gold to glimmering gray, from gray to deep brown and
+blue. In one spot a faint glimmer trembled on the waves; the light
+from Miss Vesta's lamp. The little lady gazed at it long, then
+looked up into the strong young face above her.
+
+"He was--your age!" she said, hurrying the words out in a low murmur,
+hardly louder than the night breeze in the tall lilac-trees.
+"He was bright and strong and gay like you; his sun went down while
+it was yet day. The Lord took him into his holy keeping. I wish--I
+wish you all the joy I should have tried to give him, Doctor Geoffrey.
+I wish your life fortunate and brave, and your love happy; more than
+all, your love happy."
+
+She pressed his hand, and went quietly away; came back for a moment
+to pat his arm and say she trusted she had not distressed him, and
+beg him not to stay out too long in the night air; then went into
+the house, closing the door softly after her.
+
+Left alone, Geoffrey Strong fell to his pacing again, up and down
+the neat gravel paths with their tall box hedges. His face was very
+tender; looking at it, one might know he had been a loving son to
+his mother. But presently he frowned over his cigar, and then laughed,
+and went and shook the unoffending moth (it was a rare one, if he
+had been thinking of that kind of thing) off the phlox.
+
+"All the more reason, Stupid!" he said to the moth, as it flew away.
+"A man goes and gets a girl to care for him, and then he goes and
+plays some fool trick--like as not this chap had his sheet tied--and
+leaves her alone the rest of her life. Just look at this sweet old
+angel, will you? it's a shame. No, sir, no woman in mine, thank you!"
+
+He paced again. The moth fluttered off in the gloom; fluttered back,
+hovered, then settled once more on the milk-white phlox, which
+glimmered like a fragrant ghost in the half-light. The perfume
+rose from the flowers and mingled with the delicate scent of the
+roses and the heavier breath of lilac and syringa.
+
+
+  "'Where I find her not, beauties vanish;
+  Whither I follow her, beauties flee.
+  Is there no method to tell her in Spanish"--
+
+
+"Oh, I must be drunk!" said Doctor Geoffrey. He tried another path.
+A new fragrance met him, the keen, clean, cruelly sweet smell of
+honeysuckle. Browning was gone with the phlox and the roses; and what
+was this coming unbidden into his head, crisp and clean and
+possessing, like the honeysuckle?
+
+
+  "'Where e're she be,
+  That not impossible She
+  Who shall command my life and me"--
+
+
+"I _am_ drunk!" said Geoffrey Strong. And he threw away his cigar
+and went to bed.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+
+MOSTLY PROFESSIONAL.
+
+"I fear Doctor Strong will be very much put out!" said Miss Phoebe
+Blyth.
+
+Miss Vesta sighed, and stirred her coffee delicately. "It is
+unfortunate!" she said.
+
+"Unfortunate! my dearest Vesta, it is calamitous. Just when he is
+comfortably settled in surroundings which he feels to be congenial"--
+Miss Phoebe bridled, and glanced round the pleasant dining-room--
+"to have these surroundings invaded by what he dislikes most in the
+world, a girl, and a sick girl at that; I tell you it would not
+surprise me if he should give notice at once."
+
+This was not quite true, for Miss Phoebe would have been greatly
+surprised at Doctor Strong's doing anything of the kind; but she
+enjoyed saying it, and felt rather better after it.
+
+"We could not possibly refuse, though, Sister Phoebe," said
+Miss Vesta, mildly. "Little Vesta being my name-child, and
+Brother Nathaniel without faculty, as one may say,--and it is
+certainly no place for her at home."
+
+"My dearest Vesta, I have not been entirely deprived of my senses!"
+Miss Phoebe spoke with some asperity. "Of course we cannot refuse,
+and of course we must do our utmost for our brother's motherless
+child; but none the less, it is calamitous, I repeat; and I am
+positive that Doctor Strong will be greatly annoyed."
+
+At this moment Geoffrey came in, full of apologies for his ten
+minutes' tardiness. The apologies were graciously received. The
+Miss Blyths would never have thought of such a thing as being late
+to breakfast themselves, but they were not ill-pleased to have their
+lodger, occasionally--not too often--sleep beyond the usual hour. It
+showed that he felt at home, Miss Phoebe said, and Miss Vesta, the
+mother-instinct brooding over the lad she loved, thought he needed
+all the sleep he could get, and more.
+
+"It's really disgraceful!" said the young doctor for the third time,
+as he drew his chair up to the table. "Yes, please, three lumps.
+There never was such coffee in the world, Miss Blyth. I believe the
+Sultan sends it to you from his own private coffee-garden. Creamed
+chicken? won't I? and muffins, and marmalade,--what a blessing to be
+naturally greedy! More pain this morning, Miss Blyth? I hope not."
+His quick eye had seen the cloud on his hostess's brow, and he was
+all attention and sympathy over his coffee-cup.
+
+"I thank you, Doctor Strong; I feel little pain this morning; in fact,
+I may almost say none. But I--we have been somewhat disturbed by the
+contents of a letter we have received."
+
+"Bad news?" cried Geoffrey. "I'm so sorry! Is there anything I can do,
+Miss Blyth? You will command me, of course; send telegrams or--"
+
+"I--thank you! You are always most kind and considerate, Doctor
+Strong. The fact is"--Miss Phoebe hesitated, casting about in her
+mind for the best way of breaking the news,--"the fact is, my
+brother is a widower."
+
+"Very sad, I'm sure!" murmured Geoffrey Strong. "Was it sudden?
+these shocks are terribly trying. How did she--"
+
+"Oh--no! you misapprehend me, Doctor Strong. Not sudden, nor--nor
+what you would call recent. It is some years since Nathaniel's wife
+died."
+
+"Old gentleman going to pass away himself?" said Geoffrey, but not
+aloud; he was aware of his tendency to headlong plunges; it was
+manifestly better to wait further explanations and not commit himself.
+
+"My brother has an only daughter," Miss Phoebe went on, "a girl of
+twenty. She has been at college (I strongly disapproved of her going,
+but the child is headstrong), and has worked beyond her strength. She--
+that is, her father, is anxious for her to come and pass a month or
+two with us; he thinks the sea air will benefit her."
+
+"No doubt it will!" said Geoffrey, still awaiting the catastrophe.
+It was a great bore, of course, in fact a nuisance, but it couldn't
+be helped.
+
+"This--this is what has troubled us, Doctor Strong. We fear, my
+sister and I, that the presence of a young--person of the other sex--
+will be disturbing to you."
+
+Miss Vesta looked up quickly, but said nothing. Geoffrey looked
+bewildered for a moment, then laughed aloud, colouring like a
+schoolboy. "Why, Miss Blyth, what must you think of me?" he said.
+"I am not particularly given to--to the society of young ladies, but
+I am not such a misogynist as all that."
+
+Miss Phoebe did not know what a misogynist was, and did not like to
+ask; there were so many dangerous and levelling doctrines about, as
+her father always said. Whatever it was, she was heartily glad that
+Doctor Strong did not believe in it.
+
+"Vesta is a good child," said Miss Vesta. "She makes no noise or
+trouble in the house, even when she is well. We shall of course see
+that your convenience is not interfered with in any way, Doctor
+Strong."
+
+"If you talk like that, I shall pack my trunk and go to-morrow,"
+said Geoffrey, decidedly; "and I don't want to go a bit. It's I who
+am likely to be in the way, so far as I can see; but you won't send
+me off just yet, will you?"
+
+When Geoffrey Strong smiled, people were apt to do what he wished,
+unless they were ill-conditioned people indeed, and Miss Phoebe and
+Miss Vesta were far from ill-conditioned.
+
+"I've never been so happy anywhere," the young man went on in his
+eager way, "since--since my own home was broken up. I'd stay if you
+would let me, if there were twenty--I--I mean, of course it will be
+delightful to--may I have another muffin, please? Thanks!" Geoffrey
+had broken short off, being a person of absolute honesty.
+
+"I trust your niece is not seriously out of health," he said, in
+conclusion, with his most professional air. "Is any malady indicated,
+or merely overfatigue?"
+
+Miss Phoebe put on her spectacles and took up the letter. "There is
+a word," she said, "that I did not understand, I must confess. If
+you will allow me, Doctor Strong, I will read you a portion of my
+brother's remarks. A--yes! 'Vesta seems very far from well. She cries,
+and will not eat, and she looks like a ghost. The doctor calls it
+neurasthenia.'"
+
+Doctor Strong uttered an exclamation. Miss Phoebe looked up in
+dismay.
+
+"It is nothing contagious, I trust, Doctor Strong?"
+
+"No! no! nothing of the kind. Go on, please! any more symptoms?"
+
+"I think not. She has no appetite, he says, and does not sleep well.
+He says nothing of any rash." Miss Phoebe looked anxiously at the
+young doctor. To her amazement, he was leaning forward, muffin in
+hand, his face wearing its brightest and most eager look.
+
+"Is that all?" he said. "Well--of course that's not professional.
+Very likely the physician there will send a written diagnosis if you
+ask him. You see, Miss Blyth, this is very interesting to me. I want
+to make a study of nerves,--that's all the word means, disordered
+nerves,--and it will be the greatest pleasure to me to try to be of
+service to your niece; if you should wish it, that is."
+
+"Oh, Doctor Strong! you are _too_ kind!" said both ladies in duet.
+
+They were so relieved, they overflowed in little grateful courtesies.
+He must have more cream; he was eating nothing. They feared his egg
+was not quite--was he positively sure? it would sometimes happen,
+with the greatest care, that eggs were not quite--a little scrap
+more bacon, then! or would he fancy some fresh cream cheese? and so
+on and so on, till the young doctor cried out, and said that if he
+ate any more he should not be able to mount his bicycle, far less
+ride it.
+
+"By the way," he added, "I didn't see you when I came in last night.
+I hope I didn't disturb either of you. No? That's right; if I ever
+make a noise coming in late, shoot me at sight, please. You took the
+powder, Miss Blyth? and slept well? Hurrah! Well, I was going to say,
+I had a rather amusing time at Shellback."
+
+Shellback was a village some ten miles off, whither he had been
+summoned the evening before. Both ladies brightened up. They
+delighted to hear of the young doctor's experiences.
+
+"I don't suppose you know," Doctor Strong went on,--"no, you
+wouldn't be likely to,--an old man named Butters, Ithuriel Butters?
+Quaint name! suggests 'Paradise Lost' and buns. Old Man Butters they
+call him. Well, I went to see him; and I got a lesson in therapeutics,
+and two recipes for curing rheumatism, beside. I think I must try
+one of them on you, Miss Blyth."
+
+Miss Phoebe, who was literal, was about to assure him that she was
+amply satisfied with the remedies already in use; but he went on, in
+high enjoyment, evidently seeing almost with his bodily vision the
+figures he conjured up.
+
+"It seems the old gentleman didn't want me sent for; in fact, the
+family had done it on the sly, being alarmed at certain symptoms new
+to them. I got out there, and found the old fellow sitting in his
+armchair, smoking his pipe; fine-looking old boy, white hair and
+beard, and all that. Looked me all over, and asked me what I wanted.
+Wife and daughter kept out of the way, evidently scared at what they
+had done. I went in alone. I said I had come to see him.
+
+"'All right,' says he. 'No extra charge!' and he shut his eyes, and
+smoked away for dear life. Presently he opened his eyes, and looked
+at me again.
+
+"'Like my looks?' he says.
+
+"'Yes,' said I. I thought he might have returned the compliment, but
+he didn't; he only grunted. I waited a bit, talked of this and that;
+at last I said, 'How are you feeling this evening, Mr. Butters?'
+
+"'First-rate!' said he. 'How be you?'
+
+"'I'm all right,' said I,' but I don't believe you are, sir. You are
+not the right colour at all.'
+
+"'What colour be I? not green, I calc'late!' Then we both laughed,
+and felt better. I asked if I might smoke, too, and took out my pipe.
+Pretty soon the old fellow began to talk.
+
+"'My women-folks sent for you, did they? I suspicioned they had. Fact,
+I was slim this mornin'; took slim suddin, whilest I was milkin'.
+Didn't relish my victuals, and that scairt the woman. But I took my
+physic, and, come afternoon, I was spryer 'n a steer agin.'
+
+"'What is your physic, if I may ask, Mr. Butters?'
+
+"'Woodpile!' says the old fellow.
+
+"'Woodpile?' said I.
+
+"'Cord o' wood. Axe. Sweat o' the brow. Them's the best physic I
+know of.'
+
+"He smoked on for a bit, and I sat and looked at him, admiring how
+the world was made. I don't know whether you read Kipling, Miss Vesta.
+I was rewarded for my patience.
+
+"'Young feller,' said the old man, after awhile, 'how old do you
+s'pose I be?'
+
+"'Seventy,' said I; and he looked it, not a day over.
+
+"'Add fifteen to that,' says he, 'and you have it. Eighty-five year
+last Jenooary. You are under thirty, I reckon? Thought so! Well, I
+was gettin' on for sixty year old when you was born. See?'
+
+"I did see, but I wasn't going to give in yet. 'Did you ever study
+medicine, Mr. Butters?' I said.
+
+"'Study medicine? No, sir! but I've lived with my own bones and
+insides till I know 'em consid'able well; and I've seen consid'able
+of folks, them as doctored and them as didn't. My wives doctored,
+all three of 'em. I buried two of 'em, and good ones, too; and, like
+as not, I'll bury the third. She ain't none too rugged this summer,
+though she ain't but seventy. But, what I say is, start well, and
+stay well, and don't werry. You tell your patients that, and fust
+thing you know you won't have any.'"
+
+"A singularly ignorant person, this Mr. Butters!" said Miss Phoebe.
+
+"I don't know!" said the young doctor. "I'm not so sure about that.
+I know it would be a bad thing for the medical profession if his
+ideas were generally taken up. Well, he went on over his pipe. I
+wish you could have seen him, Miss Vesta. He looked like a veritable
+patriarch come to life. Fancy Abraham with a T.D. pipe, and you have
+Ithuriel Butters. Awfully sad for those poor old duffers not to have
+tobacco. I beg your pardon, Miss Blyth.
+
+"'Yes,' said the old fellow. 'I've seen folks as doctored, and I've
+seen folks as fooled.'
+
+"'Fooled?' said I.
+
+"'Notions; fool's tricks; idees! Take my brother Reuel. He used to
+have rheumatiz; had it bad. One day there was a thunder-storm, and
+he was out gettin' in his hay, and was struck by lightnin'. Fluid
+run along the rake and spit in his face, he used to say. He lost the
+use of his eyes and hands for six months, but he never had rheumatiz
+again for twenty years. Swore it was the electricity; said he
+swallered it, and it got into his system and cured him. What do you
+say to that, young feller?'
+
+"'It's an experiment I never tried,' said I. 'I'm not going to
+commit myself, Mr. Butters. But that's a good story.'
+
+"'Hold on!' said he; 'that ain't all. 'Bout twenty-five years after
+that--Reuel was gettin' on by that time--he was out fishin', and a
+squall come up and swamped his boat. He was in the water quite a
+spell, and come next day he was all doubled up with rheumatiz. He
+was the maddest man you ever see. He wouldn't do a thing, only sit
+hunched up in his chair and ask about the weather. It was summer-time,
+and good hayin' weather as a rule. Bumbye come a fryin' hot day, and
+sure enough we had a thunder-storm in the afternoon. When it was
+bangin' away good and solid, Reuel hitched himself out of his chair,
+took an iron rake in one hand and a hoe in the other, crep' out of
+the house, and went and sat down under a tree in the middle of the
+pasture. Wife tried to stop him, but she might as well have tried to
+stop the lightnin'. Well, sir, the tree was struck, and Reuel never
+had no more rheumatiz. Couldn't tell which was tree and which was him.
+That comes of havin' idees.'"
+
+"Dear me!" said Miss Vesta. "What a painful story! His poor wife!"
+
+"Such impious ignorance I think I never heard of!" said Miss Phoebe,
+rigidly. "I should think the--a--family a most unprofitable one for
+you to visit, Doctor Strong."
+
+"But so consistent!" said Geoffrey. "Knowing their own minds, and
+carrying out their own theories of hygiene. It's very refreshing, I
+must admit. But"--Geoffrey saw that his hostesses were not amused,
+nor anything but pained and shocked--"this is enough about Ithuriel
+Butters, isn't it? We decided that he would better take a little
+something dark-coloured, with a good solid smell to it, to please
+his 'women-folks;' he'll go out some day like the snuff of a candle,
+and he knows it. But you don't want to try the lightning cure, do you,
+Miss Blyth?"
+
+"I most certainly do not!" said Miss Phoebe, concisely; and she
+reflected that even the best and most intelligent of men might often
+be lacking in delicate perception.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+
+LETTER-WRITING AND HYSTERICS
+
+The young doctor sat in his room writing. It was a pleasant room,
+looking upon the garden, and in style and furnishing altogether to
+the young doctor's taste. He liked the tall narrow mantel, with its
+delicate mouldings; he liked the white paint, and the high
+wainscoting against which, the old mahogany came out so well; and he
+liked the mahogany itself, which was in quaint and graceful shapes.
+The dimity curtains, too, with their ball and tassel fringe, were of
+such a fresh clear white. They had never been dirty, they never could
+be dirty, the young doctor thought; some things must always be fresh
+and clean; like that girl's dresses. He was sitting in his favourite
+chair; a chair that stimulated to effort or wooed to repose,
+according to the attitude one assumed in it. Geoffrey Strong felt a
+sort of ownership in this chair, for he had discovered the secret
+pocket in one arm; the tiny panel which, when pressed one day by his
+careless fingers, slipped aside, revealing a dark polished well, and
+in the well an ancient vinaigrette of green and gold glass. Sometimes
+Geoffrey would take out the vinaigrette and sniff its faded perfume,
+and it told him a new story every time. Now, however, it lay quiet
+in its nest, for Geoffrey was writing busily.
+
+
+  "You can't laugh any more at me and my old
+  ladies, Jim. There's a new development, a young
+  lady; niece, visitor here, and invalid visitor at that.
+  Neurasthenia, overwork at college, the old story.
+  When will young women learn that they are not
+  young men? Malady in this case takes the form
+  of aversion to the male sex in general, and G. S. in
+  particular. Handsome, sullen creature, tawny hair,
+  eyes no particular colour, but very brilliant; pupils
+  much dilated. I won't bother you with symptoms
+  while you are off on your vacation, but she has
+  some interesting ones. The dear old ladies want
+  me to prescribe for her, but she prefers to play with
+  pills herself. Has a remarkable voice, deep notes
+  now and again that thrill like the middle tones of
+  a 'cello; or might, if they said anything but 'Please
+  pass the butter!' If she were better tempered, I
+  should be tempted to send for you; you are simply
+  spoiling for some one to fall in love with, I can tell
+  that from your last letter. The pretty brunette had
+  not intellectuality enough, had she? My dear
+  fellow, as if that had anything to do with it! You
+  were not ready, that was all. You fall in love by
+  clockwork once every year; and it is time now. If
+  you should see the P. B. again to-morrow, you'd be
+  lost directly. As for me--I should think you
+  would be tired of asking. No, I am not in love.
+  No, I feel no inclination whatever to become so.
+  No, there is no 'charmer' (what vile expressions
+  you use, James; go back to the English Department,
+  and learn how to speak of Woman!) who interests
+  me in the least (except pathologically, of course),
+  except Miss Vesta Blyth, aged sixty. I am in love
+  with her, I grant you; anybody would be, with eyes
+  in his head. Don't I know that I would amount to
+  twice as much if the society of women formed part
+  of my life? Numskull, it _does_ form part of it, a
+  very important part. In the first place, I have my
+  patients. Body of me, my patients! Did I not sit
+  a stricken hour with Mrs. Abigail Plummer yesterday
+  afternoon? She 'feels a crawling in her pipes,'--I'll
+  spare you Mrs. Plummer, but you must hear
+  how Mrs. Cotton cured her lumbago. (I am still
+  hunting rheumatic affections, yes, and always shall
+  be.) She took a quart of rum, my Christian friend;
+  she put into it a pound and a half of sulphur and
+  three-quarters of a pound of cream tartar, and took
+  'a good swaller' three or four times a day. There's
+  therapeutics for you, sir! Lady weighs three hundred
+  pounds if she does an ounce, and has a colour
+  like a baby's. Well, I could go on indefinitely.
+  That's in the first place. In the second, I have
+  here in this house society that is absolutely to my
+  mind. Experience is life, you grant that. Therefore,
+  the person of experience is the person who
+  really lives. (Of course I admit exceptions.) Therefore,
+  the society of a woman of sixty--an intelligent
+  woman--is infinitely more to be desired than that
+  of a callow girl with nothing but eyes and theories.
+  It is profitable, it is delightful; and this with no
+  hurrying of the heart, no upsetting of the nerves,
+  none of the deplorable symptoms that I observe
+  annually in my friend Mr. James Swift. That for
+  the second place. There is a third. Jim, Jim, do
+  you forget that I was brought up with 'six female
+  cousins, and all of them girls?' They were virtuous
+  young women, every one of them; one or two were
+  good looking; four of them (including the plainest),
+  have married, and I trust their husbands find them
+  interesting. I did not, but I 'learned about women
+  from them,' as the lynx-eyed schoolboy does learn.
+  I divided them into three classes, sugary, vinegary,
+  peppery; to-day I should be more professional; let
+  us say saccharine, acidulated, irritant. These classes
+  still seem to me to include the greater part of young
+  womankind. Sorry to displease, but sich am de
+  facts. And--yes, I still sing '_aber hierathen ist nie
+  mein Sinn_!' Business? oh, so so! A country
+  doctor doesn't make a fortune, but he learns a power,
+  if he isn't an idiot. Now here is enough about me,
+  in all conscience. When you write, tell me about
+  yourself, and what the other fellows are doing.
+  After all, that is--"
+
+Geoffrey came to the end of his paper, and paused to take a fresh
+sheet. Glancing up as he did so, he also glanced out of the window,
+to see what was going on in the garden. He always liked to keep in
+touch with the garden, and was on intimate terms with every bird and
+blossom in it. It was neither bird nor blossom that his eyes lighted
+on now. A young girl stood on the gravel-path, near his favourite
+syringa arbour. A hammock hung over her arm, and she carried a book
+and a pillow. She was looking about her, evidently trying to select
+a place to hang her hammock. Geoffrey considered her. She was
+dressed in clear white; her hair, of a tawny reddish yellow, hung in
+one heavy braid over her shoulder.
+
+"Oh, yes, she is handsome," said Geoffrey, addressing the
+syringa-bush. "I never said she wasn't handsome. The question is,
+would she like me to hang that hammock for her, or would she
+consider it none of my business?"
+
+At this moment the girl dropped the book; then the pillow slipped
+from her hands. She threw down the hammock with a petulant gesture
+and stood looking at the syringa-bush as if it were her mortal enemy.
+Geoffrey Strong laid down his pen.
+
+A few minutes later he came sauntering leisurely around the corner.
+One would have said he had been spending an hour in the garden, and
+was now going in.
+
+"Good morning, Miss Blyth! glorious day, isn't it? going to sling a
+hammock? let me do it, won't you?"
+
+Vesta Blyth looked at him with sombre eyes. "I couldn't hold it!"
+she said, unwillingly. "There is no strength left in my hands."
+
+"You are still tired, you see," said Geoffrey, cheerfully, as he
+picked up the hammock. "That's perfectly natural."
+
+"It isn't natural!" said the girl, fiercely. "It's devilish!"
+
+"This is a good place," said Geoffrey, paying no attention to her.
+"Combination of shade and sun, you see. Pillow at this end? There!
+how is that?"
+
+"Thank you! it will do very well."
+
+She stretched herself at full length in the hammock. Her movements
+were perfectly graceful, he noted; and he made a swift comparison
+with the way his cousins flounced or twittered or slumped into a
+hammock.
+
+[Illustration: He stood looking at her, his hand still on the
+hammock rope.]
+
+He stood looking at her, his hand still on the hammock-rope. He was
+conscious only of a friendly feeling of compassion for this fair
+young creature, built for vigour and an active life, now condemned
+for months, it might be years, of weariness and pain. Whether any
+unconscious keenness of scrutiny crept into his eyes or not, is not
+known; but as Vesta Blyth looked up and met their gaze, a wave of
+angry crimson rushed over her face and neck.
+
+"Doctor Strong," she said, violently, her voice low and vibrating,
+as some women's are in passion, "I must request you _not_ to look at
+me!"
+
+Geoffrey started, and coloured in his turn. "I beg your pardon!" he
+said. "I was not aware--I assure you I had no intention of being rude,
+Miss Blyth."
+
+"You were not rude!" Vesta swept on. "I am rude; I am unreasonable,
+I am absurd. I can't help it. I will not be looked at professionally.
+Half the people in this village would welcome your professional
+glance as a beam from heaven, and bask in it, and drop every symptom
+as if it were a pearl, but I am not a 'case.' I am simply a human
+being, who asks nothing but to be let alone."
+
+She stopped abruptly, her bosom heaving, her eyes like black agates
+with fire behind them, looking straight past him at the trees beyond.
+"If you wish to put me to the last humiliation," she added, hurriedly,
+"you may wait and have the satisfaction of seeing me cry; if not--"
+
+But Geoffrey was gone, fleeing into the house with the sound of
+stormy sobs chasing him like Furies. He never stopped till he
+reached his own room, where he flung himself into his chair in most
+unprofessional agitation. The window was open--what a fool he was to
+leave windows open!--and the sound followed him; he could not shut
+it out. Dreadful sobs, choking, agonising; he felt, as if he saw it,
+the whole slender figure convulsed with them. Good heavens! the girl
+would be in convulsions if she went on at this rate.
+
+Now the sobs died away into long moans, into quivering breaths; now
+they broke out again, insistent, terrible. Broken words among them,
+too.
+
+"What shall I do? Oh, dear! oh, dear! what shall I do?"
+
+Geoffrey, who had been trying to look over some papers, started up
+and paced the room hurriedly. "This--this is very curious!" he was
+trying to say to himself. "Hysteria pure and simple--very interesting--
+I must note the duration of the paroxysms. Good God! can't somebody
+stop her? perfectly inhuman, to let a creature go on like that!"
+
+He was at the door, with some vague idea of alarming the house, when
+a soft knock was heard on the other side. He flung the door open,
+and startled Miss Vesta so that she gave a little cry of dismay, and
+retreated to the head of the stairs. "Pray excuse me, Doctor Strong,"
+she said. "I see that you are occupied; I pray you to excuse me!"
+
+"No, no!" said Geoffrey, hurriedly. "I am not--it's nothing at all.
+What can I do for you, Miss Vesta? Do come in, please!"
+
+"My niece," said the little lady, with a troubled look, "is in a
+highly nervous condition to-day, Doctor Strong. She is--weeping. My
+sister thought you might have--" she paused, as Miss Phoebe's crisp
+and decided tones came up over the stairs.
+
+"Little Vesta has got into a crying-spell, Doctor Strong. I want a
+little valerian for her, please. I will go down and give it to her
+myself, if you will hand it to my sister."
+
+"In one moment, Miss Blyth," called Geoffrey, in his most composed
+and professional tones. Then, seizing Miss Vesta's hand, he almost
+dragged her into the room, and shut the door.
+
+"Don't let her go!" he said, hurriedly, as he sought and poured out
+the valerian. "Take it yourself, please, Miss Vesta, please! Miss
+Blyth will--that is, she is less gentle than you; if your niece is
+in such a condition as--as you say, you are the one to soothe her.
+Will you go? Please do."
+
+"Dear Doctor Strong," said Miss Vesta, panting a little, "are you--I
+fear you are unwell yourself. You alarm me, my dear young friend."
+
+"I am a brute," said Geoffrey; "a clumsy, unfeeling brute!" He
+kissed her little white wrinkled hand; then, still holding it, paused
+to listen. The voice came up again from the place of torture.
+
+"What shall I do? Oh, dear! oh, dear! what shall I do?"
+
+He pressed the glass in Miss Vesta's hand. "There! there! a
+teaspoonful at once, please; but you will be better than medicine.
+Tell Miss Blyth--tell her I want very much to speak to her, please!
+Ask if she could come up here now, this moment, just for two or
+three minutes. And you'll go down yourself, won't you, Miss Vesta--
+dear Miss Vesta?"
+
+He was so absorbed in listening he did not hear the creaking of
+Miss Phoebe's morocco shoes on the stairs; and when she appeared
+before him, flushed and slightly out of breath, he stared at the
+good lady as if he had never seen her before.
+
+"You wished to see me, Doctor Strong?" Miss Phoebe began. She was
+half pleased, half ruffled, at being summoned in this imperious way.
+
+"Yes--oh, yes," answered Geoffrey, vaguely. "Come in, please,
+Miss Blyth. Won't you sit down--no, I wouldn't sit near the window,
+it's damp to-day (it was not in the least damp). Sit here, in my
+chair. Did you know there was a secret pocket in this chair? Very
+curious thing!"
+
+"I was aware of it," said Miss Phoebe, with dignity. "Was that what
+you wished to say to me, Doctor Strong?"
+
+"No--oh, no (thank Heaven, she has stopped! that angel is with her).
+I--I am ashamed to trouble you, Miss Blyth, but you said you would
+be so very good as to look over my shirts some day, and see if they
+are worth putting on new collars and cuffs. It's really an imposition;
+any time will do, if you are busy now. I only thought, hearing your
+voice--"
+
+"There is no time like the present," said Miss Phoebe, in her most
+gracious tone. "It will be a pleasure, I assure you, Doctor Strong,
+to look over any portions of your wardrobe, and give you such advice
+as I can. I always made my honoured father's shirts after my dear
+mother's death, so I am, perhaps, not wholly unfitted for this
+congenial task. Ah, machine-made!"
+
+"Beg pardon!" said Geoffrey, who had been listening to something else.
+
+"These shirts were made with the aid of the sewing-machine, I
+perceive," said Miss Phoebe. "No--oh, no, it is nothing unusual.
+Very few persons, I believe, make shirts entirely by hand in these
+days. I always set the same number of stitches in my father's shirts,
+five thousand and sixty. He always said that no machine larger than
+a cambric needle should touch his linen."
+
+"Then--you don't think they are worth new collars?" said Geoffrey,
+abstractedly.
+
+"Did I convey that impression?" said Miss Phoebe, with mild surprise.
+"I had no such intention, Doctor Strong. I think that a skilful
+person, with some knowledge of needlework, could make these garments
+(though machine-made) last some months yet. You see, Doctor Strong,
+if she takes this--"
+
+It was a neat and well-sustained little oration that Miss Phoebe
+delivered, emphasising her remarks with the cuff of a shirt; but it
+was lost on Geoffrey Strong. He was listening to another voice that
+came quavering up from the garden below, a sweet high voice, like a
+wavering thread of silver. No more sobs; and Miss Vesta was singing;
+the sweetest song, Geoffrey thought, that he had ever heard.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+
+INFORMATION
+
+The next day and the next Geoffrey avoided the garden as if it were
+a haunt of cobras. The dining-room, too, was a place of terror to him,
+and at each meal he paused before entering the room, nerving himself
+for what he might have to face. This was wholly unreasonable, he
+told himself repeatedly; it was ridiculous; it was--the young man
+was not one to spare himself--it was unprofessional.
+
+"Oh, yes, I know all that," he replied; "but they shouldn't cry.
+There ought to be a law against their crying."
+
+Here it occurred to him that he had seen his cousins cry many times,
+and had never minded it; but that was entirely different, he said.
+
+However, he need not distress himself, it appeared; Vesta Blyth kept
+her room for several days. At first Geoffrey found it easier not to
+speak of her; but the third day he pounced on Miss Vesta when she
+was filling her lamp, and startled her so that she almost dropped
+her scissors.
+
+"Excuse me, Miss Vesta," he said; "what funny scissors! I shouldn't
+think you could cut anything with them. I was going to ask--how is
+your niece to-day? I trust the hysterical condition is passing away?"
+
+Miss Vesta sighed. "Yes, Doctor Strong," she said. "Vesta is quiet
+again, oh, yes, very quiet, and sleeping better; we are very grateful
+for your interest in her."
+
+A few professional questions and answers followed. There were no
+acute or alarming symptoms. There was little to do for the girl,
+except to let her rest and "come round;" she would recover in time,
+but it might be a long time. Geoffrey felt somehow younger than he
+had; neurasthenia was a pretty word on paper, but he did not feel so
+sure about making a specialty of it.
+
+Miss Vesta fluttered about her lamp; he became conscious that she
+wanted to say something to him. She began with sundry little
+plaintive murmurings, which might have been addressed to him or to
+the lamp.
+
+"Pity! pity! yes, indeed. So bright and young, so full of hope and
+joy, and darkened so soon. Yes, indeed, very sad!"
+
+Geoffrey helped her. "What is it, Miss Vesta?" he asked, tenderly.
+"You are going to tell me something."
+
+Miss Vesta looked around her timidly. "Sister Phoebe did not wish me
+to mention it," she said, in a low tone. "She thinks it--indelicate.
+But--you are so kind, Doctor Strong, and you are a physician. Poor
+little Vesta has had a disappointment, a cruel disappointment."
+
+Geoffrey murmured something, he hardly knew what. The little lady
+hurried on. "It is not that I have any sympathy with--I never liked
+the object--not at all, I assure you, Doctor Strong. But her heart
+was fixed, and she had had every reason to suppose herself--it has
+been a terrible blow to her. Renunciation--in youth--is a hard thing,
+my dear young friend, a very hard thing."
+
+She pressed his hand, and hurried away with her scissors, giving one
+backward look to make sure that the lamp showed no aspect that did
+not shine with the last touch of brilliancy.
+
+Geoffrey Strong went down into the garden--he had not been there
+since the day of the sobbing--and paced about, never thinking of the
+pipe in his pocket. He found himself talking to the blue larkspur.
+"Beast!" was what he called this beautiful plant. "Dolt! ass!
+inhuman brute! If I had the kicking of you--" here he recovered his
+silence; found pebbles to kick, and pursued them savagely up one
+path and down another. A mental flash-light showed him the ruffian
+who had wounded this bright creature; had led her on to love him,
+and then--either betrayed his brutal nature so that hers rose up in
+revolt, or--just as likely--that kind of man would do anything--gone
+off and left her. His picture revealed a smart-looking person with
+black hair and a waxed moustache, and complexion of feminine red and
+white (Geoffrey called it beef and suet).
+
+"The extraordinary thing is, what women see in such a fellow!" he
+told the syringa. The syringa drooped, and looked sympathetic. The
+hammock was hanging there still--poor little thing! Geoffrey did not
+mean the hammock. He stood looking at the place, and winced as the
+sobs struck his ear again; memory's ear this time, but that was
+hardly less keen. How terribly she grieved! she must have cared for
+him; bang! went the pebbles again.
+
+There was a rustle behind the syringa-bush. Geoffrey looked up and
+saw Vesta Blyth standing before him.
+
+He could not run away. He must not look at her professionally.
+Despair imparted to his countenance a look of stony vacuity which sat
+oddly on it.
+
+The girl looked at him, and it seemed as if the shadow of a smile
+looked out of her shadowy eyes. "I thought you might be here, Doctor
+Strong," she said, quietly. "I am coming in to tea to-night. I am
+entirely myself again, I assure you--and first I wished--I want to
+apologise to you for my absurd behaviour the other day."
+
+"Please don't!" said Geoffrey.
+
+"I must; I have to. I am weak, you see, and--I lost hold of myself,
+that was all. It was purely hysterical, as you of course saw. I have
+had--a great trouble. Perhaps my aunts may have told you."
+
+Good God! she wasn't going to talk about it? Geoffrey thought a
+subterranean dungeon would be a pleasant place.
+
+"I--yes!" he admitted, feeling the red curling around his ears.
+"Miss Vesta did say something--it's an infernal shame! I wish I
+could tell you how sorry I am."
+
+"Thank you!" said the girl; and a rich note thrilled in her voice.
+Yes--it certainly was like a 'cello. "I did not know how you would--
+you are very kind, Doctor Strong. Dear Aunt Vesta; she would try to
+make the best of it, I know. Aunt Phoebe will not speak of it, she
+is too much shocked, but Aunt Vesta is angelic."
+
+"Indeed she is!" said the young doctor, heartily. "And she is so
+pretty, too, and so soft and creamy; I never saw any one like her."
+
+There was a moment of dreadful silence. Geoffrey sought desperately
+for a subject of conversation, but the frivolous spirit of tragedy
+refused to suggest anything except boots, and women never understand
+boots.
+
+The strange thing was, that the girl did not appear to find the
+silence dreadful. She stood absently curling and uncurling a
+syringa-leaf between her long white fingers. All the lines of her
+were long, except the curl of her upper lip, and there was not an
+ungraceful one among them. Her face was quietly sad, but there was
+no sign of confusion in it. Good heavens! what were women made of?
+
+Presently she turned to him, and again the shadow of a smile crept
+into her eyes. "You don't ask whether I am better, Doctor Strong,"
+she said; and there was even a faint suggestion of mischief in her
+voice.
+
+"No!" said Geoffrey. "I shall never ask you that again."
+
+The shadow turned to a spark. "You might help me!" she exclaimed.
+"At least you need not make it harder for me--" she checked herself,
+and went on in a carefully even tone. "I am so ashamed of myself!"
+she said. "I thought when I came here that I had quite got myself in
+hand; the other day taught me a lesson. I was abominably rude, and I
+beg your pardon."
+
+She held out her hand frankly; Geoffrey took it, and was conscious
+that, though it was too cold, it had the same quality that Miss
+Vesta's hand had, a touch like rose-leaves, smooth and light and dry.
+She shook hands as if she meant it, too, instead of giving a limp
+flap, as some girls did. It was impossible to tell the colour of her
+eyes; but she was speaking again.
+
+"And--I want to say this, too. There isn't anything to do for me,
+you know; I must just wait. But--I know how I should feel in your
+place; and if there seem to be any interesting or unusual symptoms,
+I will tell you--if you like?"
+
+"Thank you!" said Geoffrey. "It would be very good of you, I'm sure."
+
+She turned to the syringa-bush again, and breaking off a spray,
+fastened it in her white gown. "You think of studying nerves, I
+believe?" she said, presently. "As a specialty, I mean. Well, they
+are horrible things." She spoke abruptly, and as if half to herself.
+"To think of this network of treachery spreading through and through
+us, lying in wait for us, leading us on, buoying us up with false
+strength, sham elasticity--and then collapsing like a toy balloon,
+leaving nothing but a rag, a tatter of humanity. Oh, it is shameful!
+it is disgraceful! Look at me! what business have I with nerves?"
+
+She stretched out her long arms and threw her head back. The gesture
+was powerful; one saw that strength was the natural order of life
+with this lithe, long-limbed creature. But the next instant she
+drooped together like a tired lily.
+
+"I know that is nonsense!" she said, moodily. "I know it just as
+well as you do. I am tired; I think I'll go in now."
+
+"Why not try the hammock?" Geoffrey suggested. "The garden is better
+than the house to-day. Or--do you like the water? My canoe came
+yesterday; why not come out for a short paddle?"
+
+The girl looked at him doubtfully. "I--don't know!"
+
+"Best thing in the world for you!" said Geoffrey, who had fully
+recovered his ease, and felt benevolently professional. "You ought
+to keep out-of-doors all you can. I'll get some shawls and a pillow."
+
+Vesta looked longingly out at the water, then doubtfully again at
+the young doctor. "If you are sure--" she said; "if you really have
+time, Doctor Strong. Your patients--"
+
+"Bother my patients!" said the young doctor.
+
+An hour later, Miss Phoebe Blyth was confronting a flushed and
+panting matron at the front door.
+
+"No, Mrs. Worrett, he has not come in yet. It is past his customary
+hour, but he has been detained, no doubt, by some urgent case.
+Doctor Strong never spares himself. I fear for him sometimes, I must
+confess. Will you step in and wait, or shall I--colic? oh! if that
+is all, it will hardly be necessary to send the doctor out. I shall
+take the liberty of giving you a bottle of my checkerberry cordial.
+I have made it for forty years, and Doctor Strong approves of it
+highly. Give the baby half a teaspoonful in a wine-glass of hot water,
+and repeat the dose in an hour if not relieved. Not at all, I beg of
+you, Mrs. Worrett. It is a pleasure to be able to relieve the babe,
+as well as to spare Doctor Strong a little. He comes in quite
+exhausted sometimes from these long trips. Good evening to you, ma'am."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+
+FESTIVITY
+
+The Ladies' Society was to meet at the Temple of Vesta; or, rather
+(since that name for the brick house was known only to the old and
+the young doctor), at the Blyth Girls'. The sisters always
+entertained the society once a year, and it was apt to be the
+favourite meeting of the season. It was the peaceful pastime of two
+weeks, for Miss Phoebe and Miss Vesta, to prepare for the annual
+festivity, by polishing the already shining house to a hardly
+imaginable point of brilliant cleanliness. In the kitchen of the
+Temple, Diploma Grotty ruled supreme, as she had ruled for twenty
+years. Miss Phoebe was occasionally permitted to trifle with a jelly
+or a cream, but even this was upon sufferance; while if Miss Vesta
+ever had any culinary aspirations, they were put down with a high
+hand, and an injunction not to meddle with them things, but see
+to her parlours and her chaney. This injunction, backed by her
+own spotless ideals, was faithfully carried out by Miss Vesta.
+Miss Phoebe, by right of her position as elder sister and martyr to
+rheumatism (though she sometimes forgot her martyrdom in these days),
+took charge of the upper class of preparation; examined the lace
+curtains in search of a possible stitch dropped in the net,
+"did up" the frilled linen bags that formed the decent clothing of
+the window-tassels, the tidies, and the entire stock of "laces"
+owned by her and her sister. One could never be sure beforehand which
+collar one would want to wear when the evening came, and while one
+was about it, it was as well to do them all; so for many days the
+sewing-room was adorned with solemn bottles swathed in white, on
+which collars, cuffs, and scarfs were delicately stitched. Miss
+Vesta--cleaned.
+
+For some days the young doctor had been conscious of a stronger
+odour than usual of beeswax and rosin. Also, the tiny room by the
+front door, which was sacred as his office, began to shine with a
+kind of inward light. No one was ever there when he came in,--no one,
+that is, save the occasional patient,--but he always found that his
+papers had assembled themselves in orderly piles on the table where
+he was wont to throw them; that the table itself had become so glossy
+that things slipped about or fell off whenever he moved them; and
+that no matter where he left his pipes, he always found them ranged
+with exact symmetry on the mantel-shelf. (If he could have known the
+affectionate terror with which those delicate white old fingers
+touched the brown, fragrant, masculine things! There were four of
+the pipes, Zuleika, Haidee, Nourmahal, and Scheherezade; the fellows
+used to call them his harem, and him Haroun Alraschid.)
+
+Geoffrey was always careful about wiping his feet when he came in;
+he was a well-brought-up lad, and never meant to leave a speck on
+the polished floor. Now, however, he was aware of fragrant, newly
+rubbed spots that appeared as if by magic every time he returned
+through the entry after passing along it. Several times he saw a
+gray gown flutter and disappear through a doorway; but it might have
+been Diploma.
+
+One day, however,--it was the very day of the party,--he chanced to
+come into the parlour for a match or the like, and found Miss Vesta
+on her knees, apparently praying to one of the teak-wood chairs; and
+the girl Vesta, white as wax, standing beside another, rubbing it
+with even, practised strokes. The young doctor looked from one to
+the other.
+
+"What does this mean?" he said. "What upon earth are you doing, you
+two?"
+
+Miss Vesta looked up, pink and breathless.
+
+"My dear Doctor Strong, I wish you would use your professional
+influence with Vesta. I am making a little preparation, as you see,
+for this evening. It--I take pleasure in it, and find the exercise
+beneficial. But Vesta is entirely unfit for it, as I have repeatedly
+pointed out to her. She persists--" the little lady paused for breath.
+The young doctor took the cloth from the girl's hand, and opened the
+door.
+
+"You would better go and lie down, Miss Blyth," he said, abruptly.
+"I'll see to this--" he said "tomfoolery," but not aloud.
+
+The colour crept into Vesta's white cheeks, the first he had seen
+there. "I don't want to lie down, thank you!" she said, coldly.
+"Give me the cloth, please!"
+
+Their eyes measured swords for an instant. Then--
+
+"You can hardly stand now," said Geoffrey, quietly. "If you faint I
+shall have to carry you up-stairs, and that--"
+
+She was gone, but he still saw her face like a white flame. He
+looked after her a moment, then turned to Miss Vesta, who was still
+on her knees. His look of annoyance changed to one of distress.
+"Dear Miss Vesta, will you please get up this moment? What can you
+be doing? Are you praying to Saint Beeswax?"
+
+"Oh, no, Doctor Strong. We never--the Orthodox Church--but you are
+jesting, my dear young friend. I--a little healthful exercise--oh,
+please, Doctor Geoffrey!"
+
+For two strong hands lifted her bodily, and set her down in her own
+particular armchair. "Exercise is recommended for me," said the
+little lady, piteously. "You yourself, Doctor Geoffrey, said I ought
+to take more exercise."
+
+"So you shall. You shall dance all the evening, if you like. I'll
+play the fiddle, and you and the minister--no, no, I don't mean the
+minister! Don't look like that! you and Deacon Weight shall dance
+together. It will be the elephant and the fl--butterfly. But I am
+going to do this, Miss Vesta."
+
+He in turn went down on his knees to the teak-wood chair, and
+examined it curiously. "Is this--supposed to need cleaning?" he asked;
+"or is it to be used as a looking-glass? Perhaps you had just
+finished this one?" He looked hopefully at Miss Vesta, and saw her
+face cloud with distress.
+
+"I was about to polish it a little," she said. "It is already clean,
+in a measure, but a little extra polish on such occasions--"
+
+Geoffrey did not wait for more, but rubbed away with might and main,
+talking the while.
+
+"You see, Miss Vesta, it is very important for me to learn about
+these things. You and Miss Phoebe may turn me out some day, and then
+the lonely bachelor will have to set up his own establishment, and
+cook his own dinner, and polish his own chairs. Do you think I could
+cook a dinner? I'll tell you what we'll do, some day; we'll send
+Diploma off for a holiday, and I'll get the dinner."
+
+"Oh, my dear young friend, I fear that would not be possible.
+Diploma is so set in her ways! She will hardly let me set foot in
+the kitchen, but Sister Phoebe goes in whenever she pleases. I--I
+think that chair is as bright as it _can_ be, Doctor Strong. I am
+greatly obliged to you. It looks beautiful, and now I need not
+trouble you further; you are much occupied, I am sure. Oh, pray--pray
+give me back the cloth, Doctor Geoffrey."
+
+But Geoffrey declared he had not had such fun for weeks. "Consider
+my biceps," he said. "You ought to consider my biceps, Miss Vesta."
+
+He went from chair to chair, Miss Vesta following him with little
+plaintive murmurs, in which distress and admiration were equally
+blended; and rubbed, and rubbed again, till all the room was full of
+dark glory. There was one bad moment, when the weak leg of the
+three-cornered table threatened to give way under his vigorous attack,
+and protested with a sharp squeak of anguish; but though Geoffrey
+and Miss Vesta both examined it with searching scrutiny, no new
+crack was visible. He offered to bandage the old crack, warranting
+to make the ailing leg the strongest of the four; but, on the whole,
+it did not seem necessary.
+
+"If only Deacon Weight does not lean on it!" said Miss Vesta.
+"Perhaps you could manage to stand near it yourself, Doctor Geoffrey,
+if you should see the deacon approaching it. He is apt, when engaged
+in conversation, to rest both elbows on a table; it is a great
+strain on any furniture."
+
+Geoffrey looked a little blank. "Were you expecting me to join the
+party?" he asked; "I thought--I should be rather in the way,
+shouldn't I?" He read his answer in the piteous startled look of the
+little lady, and hastened on before she could speak. "I didn't
+suppose I was invited, Miss Vesta. Of course I shall come, if I may,
+with the greatest pleasure."
+
+"Dear Doctor Strong," said Miss Vesta, with a happy sigh, "it would
+have been such a sad blow if we must have dispensed with your society."
+
+It would indeed have been a tragic disappointment to both sisters if
+their lodger had not appeared on the great occasion. As it was,
+Miss Vesta was fluttered, and only restored to full composure when,
+at tea, Doctor Strong begged to know the exact hour at which the
+guests were expected, that he might be ready on time.
+
+The pride of the good ladies knew no bounds when Doctor Strong
+entered the parlour in faultless evening dress, with a tiny
+blush-rose, from Miss Vesta's favourite tree, in his buttonhole.
+Evening dress was becoming to Geoffrey. The Ladies' Society
+fluttered at sight of him, and primmed itself, and shook out its
+skirts.
+
+Geoffrey's face was radiant over his white tie. He had planned a
+cozy evening in his own room, with a new treatise on orthopaedics
+that had just come; but no one would have thought that he took
+delight in anything except Society meetings. He went from group to
+group, as if he were the son of the house, cheering the forlorn,
+lightening the heavy, smoothing down the prickly,--a medical Father
+O'Flynn. But it was the elderly and the middle-aged that he sought
+out; the matrons whose children he had tended, the spinsters whose
+neuralgia he had relieved. The few younger members of the Society
+bridled and simpered in vain; the young doctor never looked their way.
+
+"Good evening, Mrs. Worrett; sorry I missed you the other day; but
+Miss Blyth prescribed for you, and she is as good a doctor as I am,
+any day. How _is_ the baby now? quite well! Good; Yes; oh, yes,
+excellent. In simple cases these mild carminatives are just the thing.
+Keep his diet steady, though, while the warm weather lasts. I saw him
+with a doughnut the other day, and took it away from him; knew he
+got it by accident, of course. Yes, bread and milk, that kind of
+thing. Fine little fellow, and we want him to have the best chance
+there is.
+
+"Miss Wax, I am glad to see you here. Headache all gone, eh? Hurrah!
+I'd keep on with those powders, though, if I were you, for a week or
+two. You're looking fine, as the Scotch say. Hope you won't want to
+see me again for a long time, and it's very good and unselfish of me
+to say that, for I haven't forgotten the plum-cake you gave me.
+
+"How do you do, Deacon? glad to see you! yes, glorious weather."
+Here Geoffrey moved easily between Deacon Weight and the
+three-cornered table, which the deacon was approaching. "Suppose we
+stand here in the corner a moment! Men are always rather in the way,
+don't you think, at things of this kind? Mrs. Weight here to-night?
+ah! yes, I see her. How well she's looking! Not been well yourself,
+Deacon? I'm sorry to hear that. What's the--dyspepsia again? that's
+bad. Have you tried the light diet I recommended? Well, I would, if
+I were in your place. I'd knock off two or three pounds of your
+usual diet, and get a bicycle--yes, you could. A cousin of mine in
+New York weighed three hundred pounds before he got his bicycle; had
+one made to order, of course, special weight; now he weighs a
+hundred and seventy-five, and is as active as a cat. Great thing! ah,
+excuse me, Deacon!"
+
+He crossed the room, and bowed low before a lady with white hair and
+an amazing cap, who had been gazing at him with twinkling eyes. This
+was Mrs. Tree, the Misses Blyths' aunt.
+
+"Mrs. Tree, how do you do? why were you looking at me in that way?
+I've been trying to speak to you all the evening, but you have been
+surrounded. I think it's a shame for a women over twenty-five"
+(Mrs. Tree was ninety, and immensely proud of her age) "to
+monopolise all the attention. What do you think?"
+
+"I think you're a sassy boy!" replied Mrs. Tree, with vivacity.
+"I think children should speak when they're spoken to; that's what I
+think."
+
+She clicked some castanets in her throat, which was her way of
+laughing.
+
+"But you didn't speak to me," said Geoffrey. "You wouldn't speak. Do
+you suppose I was going to wait all the evening? What a wonderful
+cap you've got, Mrs. Tree! I'm going to have one made exactly like it.
+Will you go in to supper with me? Do! I want to cut out the minister,
+and he is coming to ask you now. I am much more amusing than he is,
+you know I am."
+
+Mrs. Tree did know it. The minister was waved off, and the oldest
+parishioner sailed in to supper on Doctor Strong's arm.
+
+"Why don't you get married," she asked on the way, "instead of
+fooling around old folks this way? If I was your ma'am, I'd find a
+wife for ye, first thing I did. You're too sassy to stay unmarried."
+
+"Miss Vesta won't have me," said Geoffrey; "and I won't have anybody
+else, unless you will relent, Mrs. Tree. Now, what do you want?
+lobster salad? Well, I shall not give you that. If you eat it you
+will be ill tomorrow, and then Direxia will send for me, and you
+will throw my medicine out of the window and get well without it,
+and then laugh in my face. I know you! have some escalloped oysters,
+there's a dear!"
+
+"I wish't I'd come in with the minister now!" said Mrs. Tree.
+
+"I don't believe a word of it!" said Geoffrey. "It's much less
+dangerous for you to flirt with me, you know it is; though even now
+Miss Phoebe is looking at us very seriously, Mrs. Tree, very
+seriously indeed."
+
+"If I was Phoebe, I'd send you to bed!" said Mrs. Tree. "That's what
+I'd do!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+
+REVELATION
+
+It was a perfect evening. The water lay like rosy glass under the
+sinking sun. Not a breath of air was stirring, and even on the beach
+the ripple did not break, merely whispered itself away in foam. The
+canoe moved easily, when it did move, under a practised stroke, but
+much of the time it lay at ease, rocking a little now and then as a
+swell rose and melted under it. Vesta lay among her pillows at one
+end, and Geoffrey faced her. Her face was turned toward the west,
+and he wondered whether it was only the sunset glow that touched it,
+or whether the faint rosy flush belonged there. Certainly the waxen
+hue was gone; certainly the girl was wonderfully better. But he did
+not look at her much, because it got into his breathing somehow. He
+had not been paddling for a year, and he was "soft," of course;
+nothing surprising in that.
+
+He was telling her about some of his patients. The thing that did
+surprise him was the interest she seemed to take; active,
+intelligent interest. Being sick herself, perhaps, gave her a
+natural sympathy; and she certainly had extraordinary intelligence,
+even insight. Singular thing for a girl to have!
+
+"But what became of the poor little fellow? did he live? better not,
+I am sure. I hope he did not."
+
+"Yes; almost a pity, but he did live. Got well, too, after a fashion,
+but he'll never be able to do anything."
+
+The girl was silent. Presently--"I wonder whether it is worth while
+to get well after a fashion!" she said. "I wonder if it's worth
+while to go on living and never be able to do anything. I suppose I
+shall find out."
+
+"You!" said the young doctor. "You will be entirely well in a year,
+Miss Blyth; I'd be willing to wager it."
+
+Vesta shook her head.
+
+"No!" she said. "The spring is broken. There is nothing _real_ the
+matter with me, I know that well enough. It's nothing but nerves--
+and heart, and mind; nothing but the whole of my life broken and
+thrown aside."
+
+She spoke bitterly, and Geoffrey felt a pang of compassion. She was
+so young, and so pretty--beautiful was the word, rather. It seemed
+too cruel. If only she would not say anything more about it! How
+_could_ she? was it because he was a physician? He would go and be
+a costermonger if that--
+
+"You see," she went on, slowly; "I cared so tremendously. I had
+thought of nothing else for years, dreamed of nothing else. All there
+was of me went into it. And then, then--when this came; when he told
+me--I--it was pretty hard."
+
+The quiver in her voice was controlled instantly, but it was almost
+worse than the sobs. Geoffrey broke out, fiercely:
+
+"I don't know whether this man is more a beast or a devil; but I
+know that he is not fit to live, and I wish I--"
+
+Vesta looked up at him in surprise. His face was crimson; his angry
+eyes looked beyond her, above her, anywhere except at her.
+
+"I don't know what you mean!" she said. "He was neither. He was kind,
+oh, very kind. He did it as tenderly as possible. I shall always be
+grateful--" the quiver came again, and she stopped.
+
+"Oh!" cried Geoffrey. He drove his paddle savagely into the water,
+and the canoe leaped forward. What were women made of? why, _why_
+must he be subjected to this?
+
+The silence that followed was almost worse than the speech. Finally
+he stole a glance at his companion, and saw her face still faintly
+rosy--it must be mostly the light--and set in a sadness that had no
+touch of resentment in it.
+
+"Perhaps you don't like my talking about it," she said, after awhile.
+
+Geoffrey uttered an inarticulate murmur, but found no words.
+
+"The aunties don't. Aunt Phoebe gets angry, and Aunt Vesta tearful
+and embarrassed. But--well, I could not stay at home. Everything
+there reminded me--I thought if I came here, where no such ideas
+ever entered, I might begin--not to forget, but to resign myself a
+little, after a time. But--I found you here. No, let me speak!" She
+raised her hand, as Geoffrey tried to interrupt.
+
+"I have to make you understand--if I can--why I was rude and odious
+and ungrateful when I first came, for I was all those things, and I
+am not naturally so, I truly don't think I am. But, don't you see?--
+to come right upon some one who was having all that I had lost,
+enjoying all I had hoped to enjoy, and caring--well, perhaps as much
+as I cared, but still in a different way, a man's way, taking it all
+as a matter of course, where I would have taken it on my knees--"
+
+"You must let me speak now, Miss Blyth," said Geoffrey Strong. He
+spoke loud and quickly, to drown the noise in his ears.
+
+"I cannot let you--go on--under such a total misapprehension. I
+could not in a lifetime say how sorry I am for your cruel trouble.
+It makes me rage; I'd like to--never mind that now! but you are
+wholly mistaken in thinking that anything of the kind has ever come
+into my own life. I don't know how you received the impression, but
+you must believe me when I say I have never had any--any such affair,
+nor the shadow of one. It isn't my line. I not only never have had,
+but probably never shall have--" he was hurrying out word upon word,
+hoping to get it over and done with once and for ever. But letting
+his eyes drop for an instant to the girl's face, he saw on it a look
+of such unutterable amazement that he stopped short in his headlong
+speech.
+
+They gazed at each other from alien worlds. At length--"Doctor Strong,"
+said Vesta, and the words dropped slowly, one by one, "what do you
+mean?"
+
+Geoffrey was silent. If she did not know what he meant, he certainly
+did not.
+
+"What do you mean?" she repeated. "I do not understand one word of
+what you are saying."
+
+Geoffrey tried hard to keep his temper. "You were speaking of your--
+disappointment," he said, stiffly. "You seemed to take it for
+granted that I--was engaged in some affair of a similar nature, and
+I felt bound to undeceive you. I have never been what is called in
+love in my life."
+
+The bewilderment lingered in Vesta's eyes for an instant; then a
+light came into them. The sunset rushed in one crimson wave over
+face and neck and brow; she fell back on her pillows, quivering from
+head to foot. Was she going to cry again?
+
+She was laughing! silently at first, trying hard to control herself;
+but now her laughter broke forth in spite of her, and peal after peal
+rang out, wild and sweet, helpless in its intensity.
+
+Geoffrey sat paralysed a moment; then the professional instinct awoke.
+"Hysteria! another manifestation, that is all. I must stop it."
+
+He leaned forward.
+
+"Miss Blyth!"
+
+"Ha, ha, ha!" laughed the girl. "Oh, dear, oh, dear! what shall I do?
+ha, ha, ha, ha! oh, what shall I do?"
+
+"Stop!" said Geoffrey Strong. "Do you hear me? stop!"
+
+"Oh, yes, I hear you--but--it is so funny! oh, it _is_ so funny! ha,
+ha, ha! what shall I do?"
+
+"What shall _I_ do?" said Geoffrey to himself. "She'll have the
+canoe over in another minute." He crept toward the girl, and seized
+her wrists in a firm grip.
+
+"Be still!" he said. "I shall hold you until you are quiet. Be--still!
+no more! be still!"
+
+"You--hurt me!" whispered the girl. The wild laughter had died away,
+but she was still shaking, and the tears were running down her cheeks.
+
+"I mean to hurt you. I shall hurt you more, if you are not quiet. As
+soon as you are quiet I will let you go. Be--still--still--there!"
+
+He loosed her hands, and took up the paddle again. This kind of
+thing was very exhausting; he was quivering himself, quite
+perceptibly. Now why? nerves of sympathy?
+
+He paddled on in silence; the sun went down, and the afterglow
+spread and brightened along the sky. He hardly thought of his
+companion, his whole mind bent on suppressing the turmoil that was
+going on in himself.
+
+He started at the sound of her voice; it was faint, but perfectly
+controlled.
+
+"Doctor Strong!"
+
+"Miss Blyth!"
+
+"You--thought--I had had a disappointment in love?"
+
+"I did!"
+
+"You are mistaken. You misunderstood my aunt, or me, or both. I have
+never, any more than you--"
+
+Her voice grew stronger, and she sat upright.
+
+"It was so _very_ funny--no, I am not going off again--but I think
+there was some excuse for me this time. You certainly are having
+every opportunity of studying my case, Doctor Strong. The truth is--
+oh, I supposed it had been made clear to you; how could I suppose
+anything else? It was my career, my life, that I had to give up, not--
+not a man. You say you have never been what is called in love;
+Doctor Strong, no more have I!"
+
+There was silence, and now it was in Geoffrey's face that the tide
+rose. Such a burning tide it was, he fancied he heard the blood hiss
+as it curled round the roots of his hair. He noted this as curious,
+and remembered that in hanging or drowning it was the trifles that
+stamped themselves upon the mind. Also, it appeared that he was
+hollow, with nothing but emptiness where should have been his vital
+parts.
+
+"Shall I say anything?" he asked, presently. "There isn't anything
+to say, is there, except to beg your pardon? would you like to hear
+that I am a fool? But you know that already. Your aunt--things were
+said that were curiously misleading--not that that is any excuse--Do
+you want me to go into detail, or may I drown myself quietly?"
+
+"Oh! don't," said Vesta, smiling. "I could not possibly paddle
+myself home, and I should infallibly upset the canoe in trying to
+rescue you."
+
+"You would not try!" said Geoffrey, gloomily. "It would not be human
+if you tried."
+
+"It would be professional," said Vesta. "Come, Doctor Strong, you
+see I can laugh about it, and you must laugh, too. Let us shake hands,
+and agree to forget all about it."
+
+Geoffrey shook hands, and said she was very magnanimous; but he
+still felt hollow. The only further remark that his seething brain
+presented was a scrap of ancient doggerel:
+
+  "I wish I was dead,
+  Or down at Owl's Head,
+  Or anywhere else but here!"
+
+This was manifestly inappropriate, so he kept silence, and paddled
+on doggedly.
+
+"And aren't you going to ask what my disappointment really was?"
+inquired Vesta, presently. "But perhaps you have guessed?"
+
+No, Geoffrey had not guessed.
+
+"Don't you want to know? I should really--it would be a comfort to
+me to talk it over with you, if you don't mind."
+
+Geoffrey would be delighted to hear anything that she chose to tell
+him.
+
+"Yes, you seem delighted. Well--you see, you have not understood,
+not understood in the very least; and now in a moment you are going
+to know all about it." She paused for a moment, and there was an
+appeal in her clear, direct gaze; but Geoffrey did not want to be
+appealed to.
+
+"I was at Johns Hopkins," said Vesta. "It was the beginning of my
+second year; I broke down, and had to give it up. I was studying
+medicine myself, Doctor Strong."
+
+"Oh!" cried Geoffrey Strong.
+
+The exclamation was a singular one; a long cry of amazement and
+reprobation. Every fibre of the man stiffened, and he sat rigid, a
+statue of Disapproval.
+
+"I beg your pardon!" he said, after a moment. "I said it before, but
+I don't know that there is anything else to say. No doubt I was very
+stupid, yet I hardly know how I could have supposed just this to be
+the truth. I--no! I beg your pardon. That is all."
+
+The girl looked keenly at him. "You are not sorry for me any more,
+are you?" she said.
+
+Geoffrey was silent.
+
+"You were sorry, very sorry!" she went on. "So long as you thought I
+had lost that precious possession, a lover; had lost the divine
+privilege of--what is the kind of thing they say? merging my life in
+another's, becoming the meek and gentle helpmeet of my God-given
+lord and master--you were very sorry. I could not make it out; it
+was so unlike what I expected from you. It was so human, so kind, so--
+yes, so womanlike. But the moment you find it is not a man, but only
+the aspiration of a lifetime, the same aspiration that in you is
+right and fitting and beautiful--you--you sit there like a--lamp-post--
+and disapprove of me."
+
+"I am sorry!" said Geoffrey. He was trying hard to be reasonable,
+and said to himself that he would not be irritated, come what might.
+"I cannot approve of women studying medicine, but I am sorry for you,
+Miss Blyth."
+
+Her face, which had been bitter enough in its set and scornful beauty,
+suddenly melted into a bewildering softness of light and laughter.
+She leaned forward. "But it was funny!" she said. "It was very, very
+funny, Doctor Strong, you must admit that. You were so compassionate,
+so kind, thinking me--"
+
+"Do you think perhaps--but never mind! you certainly have the right
+to say whatever you choose," said Geoffrey, holding himself carefully.
+
+"And all the time," she went on, "I utterly unconscious, and only
+fretting because I could not have my own life, my own will, my own
+way!"
+
+"By Jove!" said Geoffrey, starting. "That--that's what I say myself!"
+
+"Really!" said Vesta, dryly. "You see I also am human, after all"
+
+"Do you see little Vesta anywhere, sister?" asked Miss Phoebe Blyth.
+
+Miss Vesta had just lighted her lamp, and was standing with folded
+hands, in her usual peaceful attitude of content, gazing out upon
+the sunset sea. A black line lay out there on the rosy gold of the
+water; she had been watching it, watching the rhythmic flash of the
+paddle, and thinking happy, gentle thoughts, such as old ladies of
+tender heart often think. Miss Phoebe had no part in these thoughts,
+and Miss Vesta looked hurriedly round at the sound of her crisp
+utterance. Her breath fluttered a little, but she did not speak.
+Miss Phoebe came up behind her and peered out of the window.
+"I don't see where the child can be," she said, rather querulously.
+"I thought she was in the garden, but I don't--do you see her
+anywhere, Vesta?"
+
+Miss Vesta had never read the "Pickwick Papers;" she considered
+Dickens vulgar; but her conduct at this moment resembled that of
+Samuel Weller on a certain noted occasion. Raising her eyes to the
+twilight sky, Miss Vesta said, gently, "No, Sister Phoebe, I do not!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+
+SIDE LIGHTS
+
+  ELMERTON, June 20, 1900.
+
+  DEAR JIM:--It is rather curious that you
+  should have written me this particular letter at this
+  particular time. 'Give me a man's coincidences
+  and I'll give you his life!' Who is it says that?
+
+  You want my opinion about women's studying
+  medicine; you personally have reason to think that
+  the career of medicine is not incompatible with true
+  womanliness, exquisite refinement, perfect grace and
+  breeding. I really cannot copy your whole letter. The
+  symptoms are, alas, only too familiar! You have met
+  your Fate again (and those foolish old Greeks used
+  to believe there were only three of 'em!) and she
+  is a doctor, or is going to be one. Well--it's curious,
+  as I said, for it happens that I have been thinking
+  more or less about the same matter. I used to feel
+  very strongly about it--hang it, I still feel very
+  strongly about it! A girl doesn't know what she is
+  doing when she goes into medicine. I grant that
+  she does it, in many cases, from the highest possible
+  motives. I grant that she is far ahead of most men
+  in her ideas of the profession, and what it means, or
+  ought to mean. But, all the same, she doesn't know
+  what she is going in for, and I cannot conceive of a
+  man's letting any woman he cares for go on with
+  it. She must lose something; she must, I tell you;
+  she cannot help it. And even if it isn't the essential
+  things, still it changes her. She is less woman,
+  less--whatever you choose to call it. A coarser
+  touch has come upon her, and she is changed. Well,
+  I say I believe all this, and I do, with all my soul;
+  and yet, as you say, it's cruel hard for a young creature,
+  all keyed up to a pitch of enthusiasm and
+  devotion and noble aspiration, to be checked like a
+  boy's kite, and brought down to the ground and told
+  to mind her seam. It's cruel hard, I can see that;
+  I can feel and sympathise intensely with all that
+  part of it, and honour the purpose and the spirit,
+  even though I cannot approve of the direction.
+
+  Oh, glancing at your letter again, I see that in
+  your friend's case everything seems to be going on
+  smoothly. Well, the principle remains the same. I
+  suppose--I seem to have drifted away from your
+  question, somehow--I suppose one woman in ten
+  thousand _may_ make a good physician. I suppose
+  that this ten-thousandth woman--a woman who is
+  all that you say--may be justified, perhaps, in
+  becoming a physician; whether a woman physician
+  can _remain_ all that you say--ah! that is the question!
+  Man alive, am I Phoebus Apollo, that I should
+  know the answers to all the questions? I wish I
+  could find the way to Delphi myself.
+
+  But don't get the idea that you bore me with
+  your confidences, old man. Did I say so? on the
+  contrary, tell me all you can; it interests me extremely.
+  I am thinking about these matters--pathologically--a
+  good deal. A physician has to, of
+  course. Tell me how you feel, how it takes you.
+  Do you find it gets into your breathing sometimes,
+  like rarefied air? Curious sensation, rarefied air--I
+  remember it on Mont Blanc.
+
+  What am I doing? Man, I am practising medicine!
+  Cases at present, one typhoid, two tonsilitis,
+  five measles, eight dyspepsia, six rheumatism, _et id
+  gen om._, one cantankerousness (she calls it depression),
+  one gluttony, one nerves. Pretty busy, but
+  my wheel keeps me in good trim. I have been
+  paddling more or less, too, to keep chest and arms
+  up with the rest of the procession.
+
+  The old ladies are as dear as ever; if I am not
+  wholly spoilt, it will not be their fault, bless their
+  kind hearts! The niece is better, I think.
+
+  Good-bye, old man! write again soon, and tell
+  me more about Amaryllis. How pretty the classical
+  names are: Chloe, Lalage, Diana, Vesta. I was
+  brought up on Fannies and Minnies and Lotties,
+  with Eliza for a change. Horrible name, Eliza!
+
+     GEOFF.
+
+The young doctor had just posted the above letter, and was
+sauntering along the street on his way home. It lacked an hour of
+tea-time, and he was wondering which of several things he should do.
+There was hardly time for a paddle; besides, Vesta Blyth had gone
+for a drive with the minister's daughter. Geoffrey did not think
+driving half as good for her as being on the water. He must contrive
+to get through his afternoon calls earlier to-morrow. He might stop
+and see how Tommy Candy was,--no! there was Tommy, sitting by the
+roadside, pouring sand over his head from a tin cup. He was all right,
+then; the young doctor thought he would be if they stopped dosing him,
+and fed him like a Christian for a day or two. Well,--there was no
+one else who could not wait till morning. Why should he not go and
+call on Mrs. Tree? here he was at the house. It was the hour when in
+cities the sophisticated clustered about five o'clock tea-tables,
+and tested the comfort of various chairs, and indulged in talk as
+thin as the china and bread and butter. Five o'clock tea was unknown
+in Elmerton, but Mrs. Tree would be glad to see him, and he always
+enjoyed a crack with her.
+
+He turned in at the neat gate. The house stood well back from the
+street, in the trimmest and primmest little garden that ever was seen.
+Most of the shrubs were as old as their owner, and had something
+of her wrinkled sprightliness; and the annuals felt their
+responsibilities, and tried to live up to the York and Lancaster
+rose and the strawberry bush.
+
+The door was opened by a Brownie, disguised in a cap and apron. This
+was Direxia Hawkes, aunt to Diploma Grotty. In his mind Geoffrey had
+christened the little house the Aunt's Nest, but he never dared to
+tell anybody this.
+
+"Well, Direxia, how is Mrs. Tree to-day? would she like to see me,
+do you think?"
+
+"She ain't no need to see you!"
+
+The young doctor looked grieved, and turned away.
+
+"But I expect she'd be pleased to. Step in!"
+
+This was Direxia's one joke, and she never tired of it; no more did
+Geoffrey. He entered the cool dim parlour, which smelt of red cedar;
+the walls were panelled with it. The floor was of polished oak, dark
+with age; the chairs and tables were of rare foreign woods, satin
+and leopard wood, violet-wood and ebony. The late Captain Tree had
+been a man of fancy, and, sailing on many seas, never forgot his name,
+but bought precious woods wherever he found them.
+
+"Here's the doctor!" said Direxia. "I expect he'll keep right on
+coming till he finds you sick."
+
+"That's what he will do!" said Geoffrey. "No chance for me to-day,
+though, I see. How do you do, Mrs. Tree? I think it is hardly
+respectable for you to look so well. Can't you give me one little
+symptom? not a tiny crick in your back? you ought to have one,
+sitting in that chair."
+
+Mrs. Tree was sitting bolt upright in an ancient straight-backed
+chair of curious workmanship. It was too high for her, so her little
+feet, of which she was inordinately vain, rested on a hassock of
+crimson tapestry. She wore white silk stockings, and slippers of
+cinnamon-coloured satin to match her gown. A raffled black silk apron,
+a net kerchief pinned with a quaint diamond brooch, and a cap
+suggesting the Corinthian Order, completed her costume. Her face was
+netted close with fine wrinkles, but there was no sign of age in her
+bright dark eyes.
+
+"Never you trouble yourself about my cheer!" said the old lady with
+some severity. "Sit down in one yourself--there are plenty of
+lolloping ones if your back's weak--and tell me what mischief you
+have been up to lately. I wouldn't trust you round the corner."
+
+"You'll break my heart some day," said Geoffrey, with a heavy sigh;
+"and then you will be sorry, Mrs. Tree. Mischief? Let me see! I set
+Jim Arthur's collar-bone this morning; do you care about Jim Arthur?
+he fell off his bicycle against a stone wall."
+
+"Serve him right, too!" said Mrs. Tree. "Riding that nasty thing,
+running folks down and scaring their horses. I'd put 'em all in the
+bonfire-pile if I was Town Council. Your turn will come some day,
+young man, for all you go spinning along like a spool of cotton.
+How's the girls?"
+
+She rang the bell, and Direxia appeared.
+
+"Bring the cake and sherry!" she said. "It's a shame to spoil boys,
+but when they're spoilt already, there's less harm done. How's the
+girls?"
+
+Geoffrey reported a clean bill of health, so far as Miss Phoebe and
+Miss Vesta were concerned. "I really am proud of Miss Phoebe!" he
+said. "She says she feels ten years younger than she did three
+months ago, and I think it's true."
+
+"Phoebe has no call to feel ten years younger!" said Mrs. Tree,
+shortly. "She's a very suitable age as it is. I don't like to see a
+cat play kitten, any more than I like to see a kitten play cat.
+How's the child?"
+
+"I should like to see Miss Phoebe playing kitten!" said Geoffrey,
+his eyes dancing. "It would be something to remember. What child,
+Mrs. Tree?"
+
+"The little girl; little Vesta. Is she coming out of her tantrums,
+think?"
+
+"She--is a great deal better, certainly," said Geoffrey. "I hope--I
+feel sure that she will recover entirely in time. But you must not
+call her trouble tantrums, Mrs. Tree, really. Neurasthenia is a
+recognised form of--"
+
+"You must have looked quite pretty when you was short-coated!" said
+the old lady, irrelevantly. "Have some wine? the cake is too rich
+for you, but you may have just a crumb."
+
+"You must have been the wickedest thing alive when you were eighteen!"
+said Geoffrey, pouring out the amber sherry into a wonderful gilt
+glass. "I wish Direxia would stay in the room and matronise me; I'm
+afraid, I tell you."
+
+"If Direxia had nothing better to do, I'd send her packing," said
+Mrs. Tree. "Here!"
+
+They touched glasses solemnly.
+
+"Wishing you luck in a wife!" said the old lady.
+
+"Good gracious!" cried Geoffrey.
+
+"It's what you need, young man, and you'd better be looking out for
+one. There must be some one would have you, and any wife is better
+than none."
+
+She looked up, though not at Geoffrey, and a twinkle came into her
+eyes. "Do you call little Vesta pretty, now?" she asked.
+
+"Not pretty," said Geoffrey; "that is not the word. I--"
+
+"Then you'd better not call her anything," said Mrs. Tree, "for
+she's in the door behind ye."
+
+Geoffrey started violently, and turned around. Vesta was standing
+framed in the dark doorway. The clear whiteness of her beauty had
+never seemed more wonderful. The faint rose in her cheeks only made
+the white more radiant; her eyes were no longer agate-like, but soft
+and full of light; only her smile remained the same, shadowy, elusive,
+a smile in a dream.
+
+When the young doctor remembered his manners and rose to his feet--
+after all, it was only a moment or two--he saw that Miss Vesta was
+standing behind her niece, a little gray figure melting into the
+gloom of the twilight hall. The two now entered the room together.
+
+"Aunt Vesta wanted you to see my new hat, Aunt Tree," said the girl.
+"Do you like it?"
+
+"Yes!" said Miss Vesta, coming forward timidly. "Good evening, Aunt
+Marcia. Oh, good evening to you, Doctor Strong. The hat seemed to me
+so pretty, and you are always so kindly interested, Aunt Marcia! I
+ought to apologise to you, Doctor Strong, for introducing such a
+subject."
+
+"Vesta, don't twitter!" said Mrs. Tree. "Is there anything improper
+about the hat? It's very well, child, very well. I always liked a
+scoop myself, but folks don't know much nowadays. What do you think
+of it, young man?"
+
+Geoffrey thought it looked like a lunar halo, but he did not say so;
+he said something prim and conventional about its being very pretty
+and becoming.
+
+"Are you going to sit down?" asked Mrs. Tree. "I can't abide to see
+folks standing round as if they was hat-poles."
+
+Miss Vesta slipped into a seat, but the younger Vesta shook her head.
+
+"I must go on!" she said. "Aunt Phoebe is expecting a letter, and I
+must tell her that there is none."
+
+"Yes, dear, yes!" said Miss Vesta. "Your Aunt Phoebe will be
+impatient, doubtless; you are right. And perhaps it will be best for
+me, too--" she half rose, but Mrs. Tree pulled her down again
+without ceremony.
+
+"You stay here, Vesta!" she commanded. "I want to see you. But you"--
+she turned to Geoffrey, who had remained standing--"can go along
+with the child, if you're a mind to. You'll get nothing more out of
+me, I tell ye."
+
+"I am going to send you a measles bacillus to-morrow morning," said
+the young doctor. "You must take it in your coffee, and then you
+will want to see me every day. Good-bye, Mrs. Tree! some day you
+will be sorry for your cruelty. Miss Vesta--till tea-time!"
+
+Aunt and niece watched the young couple in silence as they walked
+along the street. Both walked well; it was a pleasure to see them
+move. He was tall enough to justify the little courteous bend of the
+head, but not enough to make her anxious about the top of her hat--
+if she ever had such anxieties.
+
+"Well!" said Mrs. Tree, suddenly.
+
+Miss Vesta started. "Yes, dear Aunt Marcia!" she said. "Yes,
+certainly; I am here."
+
+"They make a pretty couple, don't they?" said the old lady.
+"If she would come out of her tantrums,--hey, Vesta?"
+
+"Oh, Aunt Marcia!" said Miss Vesta, softly. She blushed very pink,
+and looked round the room with a furtive, frightened glance.
+
+"No, there's no one behind the sofa," said Mrs. Tree; "and there's
+no one under the big chair, and Phoebe is safe at home with her
+knitting, and the best place for her." (Mrs. Tree did not "get on"
+with her niece Phoebe.) "There's no use in looking like a scared
+pigeon, Vesta Blyth. I say they make a pretty couple, and I say they
+would make a pretty couple coming out of church together. I'd give
+her my Mechelin flounces; you'll never want 'em."
+
+"Oh, Aunt Marcia!" said dear Miss Vesta, clasping her soft hands.
+"If it might be the Lord's will--"
+
+"The Lord likes to be helped along once in a while!" said Mrs. Tree.
+"Don't tell me! I wasn't born yesterday." And this statement was not
+to be controverted.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+
+OVER THE WAY
+
+"Deacon," said Mrs. Weight, "Mis' Tree is sick!"
+
+"Now, reelly!" said the deacon. "Is that so?"
+
+"It is so. She sent for Doctor Strong this morning. I saw Direxia go
+out, and she was gone just the len'th of time to go to the girls'
+and back. Pretty soon he came, riding like mad on that wheel thing
+of his. He stayed 'most an hour, and came out with a face a yard long.
+I expect it's her last sickness, don't you?"
+
+"Mebbe so!" said the deacon, dubiously. "Mis' Tree has had a long
+life; she'd oughter be prepared; I trust she is. She has always
+loved the world's things, but I trust she is. Ain't this ruther a
+slim dinner, Viny? I was looking for a boiled dinner to-day, kind of."
+
+"Fried apples and pork was good enough for my father," replied his
+wife, "and I guess they'll do for you, Ephraim Weight. Doctor Strong
+says you eat too much every day of your life, and that's why you run
+to flesh so. Not that I think much of what he says. I asked him how
+he accounted for me being so fleshy, and not the value of a great
+spoonful passing my lips some days; he made answer he couldn't say.
+I think less of that young man's knowledge every time I see him.
+'Pears to me if I was the Blyth girls, I should be real unwilling to
+have my aunt pass away with no better care than she's likely to get
+from him. Billy, where's your push-piece? I don't want to see you
+push with your fingers again. It's real vulgar."
+
+"I've eat it!" said Billy. "Mother, there's the young lady from
+Miss Blythses going in to Mis' Tree's."
+
+"I want to know--so she is! She's got a bag with her. She's going to
+stay. Well, I expect that settles it. I should think Phoebe and
+Vesta would feel kind o' bad, being passed over in that way, but
+it's pleasant to have young folks about a dying bed--Annie Lizzie,
+I'll slap you if you don't stop kicking under the table--and
+Nathaniel was always his aunt's favourite. Most likely she's left her
+property to him, or to this girl. I expect it'll be a handsome
+provision. Mis' Tree has lived handsome and close all her days. As
+you say, deacon, I hope she's prepared, but I never see any signs of
+active piety in her myself."
+
+There was a pause, while all the family--except Annie Lizzie, who
+profited by the interlude to take two doughnuts beyond her usual
+allowance--gazed eagerly at the house opposite.
+
+"She's questioning Direxia. She's shaking her head. Mebbe it's all
+over by now; I expect it is. I declare, there's a kind of solemn
+look comes over a house--you can't name it, but it's there. Deacon,
+I think you'd ought to step over. Elder Haskell is away, you know,
+and you senior deacon; I do certainly think you'd ought to step over
+and offer prayer, or do whatever's needful. They'll want you to
+break it to the girls, like as not; it's terrible to have no man in
+a family. All them lone women, and everything to see to; I declare,
+my heart warms to 'em, if Phoebe _is_ cranky. Ain't you going, Deacon?"
+
+The deacon hesitated. "I--ain't sure that I'd better, Viny!" he said.
+"I feel no assurance that Mis' Tree has passed away, and she is not
+one that welcomes inquiry as a rule. I've no objection to asking at
+the door--"
+
+"Now, Deacon, if that isn't you all over! you are always so afraid
+of putting yourself forward. Where would you have been this day, I
+should like to know, if it hadn't been for me shoving behind? I tell
+you, when folks comes to their last end they suffer a great change.
+If you let that woman die--though it's my firm belief she's dead
+a'ready--without at least trying to bring her state before her,
+you'll have to answer for it; I won't be responsible. Here's your hat;
+now you go right over. There's no knowing--"
+
+"There's Doctor Strong going in now!" pleaded the deacon. "Most
+likely he will see to--"
+
+"Ephraim Weight! look me in the eye! We've lived opposite neighbours
+to Mis' Tree twenty years, and do you think I'm going to have it
+said that when her time came to die we stood back and let strangers,
+and next door to heathen, do for her? If you don't go over. I shall.
+Mebbe I'd better go, anyway. Wait till I get my bunnit--"
+
+It ended with the deacon's going alone. Slowly and unwillingly he
+plodded across the street, and shuffled up the walk; timidly and
+half-heartedly he lifted the shining knocker and let it fall.
+Direxia Hawkes opened the door, and he passed in.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Well?" said Mrs. Weight.
+
+The deacon had not made a long stay at the opposite house. Returning
+faster than he came, his large white cheeks were slightly flushed;
+his pale blue eyes wore a startled look. He suffered his wife to
+take his hat and stick from him, and opened his mouth once or twice,
+but said nothing.
+
+"Well?" said Mrs. Weight again. "Is she dead, Deacon? Ephraim, what
+has happened to you? have you lost the use of your speech? Oh! what
+will become of me, with these four innocent--"
+
+"Woman, be still!" said Ephraim Weight; and his wife was still,
+gaping in utter bewilderment at this turning of her mammoth but
+patient worm.
+
+"Mrs. Tree is not dead!" resumed the deacon. "I don't see as she's
+any more likely to die than I am. I don't see as there's any living
+thing the matter with her--except the devil!"
+
+At this second outburst Mrs. Weight collapsed, and sat down, her
+hands on her knees, staring at her husband. The children whimpered
+and crept behind her ample back. "Pa" was transformed.
+
+"I went to that house," Deacon Weight went on, "against my judgment,
+Viny; you know I did. I felt no call to go, quite the reverse, but
+you were so--
+
+"I found Mis' Tree sitting up straight in her chair in the parlour.
+She had her nightcap on, and her feet in a footmuff, but that was
+all the sign of sickness I could see. She looked up at me as wicked
+as ever I saw her. 'Here's the deacon,' she says! 'he's heard I'm
+sick--Viny saw you come, doctor,--and he has come to pray over me.
+I'm past praying for, Deacon. Have some orange cordial!'
+
+"There was glasses on the tray, and a decanter of that cordial
+Direxia makes; it's too strong for a temperance household. Doctor
+Strong and that young Blyth girl were sitting on two stools, and
+they was all three playing cards! I suppose I looked none too well
+pleased, for Mis' Tree said, 'I can't have you turning my cordial
+sour, Ephraim Weight. Remember when you stole oranges out of the
+schooner, and Cap'n Tree horsed you up and spanked you? here's your
+health, Ephraim!'
+
+"She--she looked at me for a minute, sharp and quick--I was seeking
+for some word that might bring her to a sense of her state, and what
+was fitting at her age--and then she begun to laugh. 'You thought I
+was dead!' says she. 'You thought I was dead, I see it in your face;
+and Viny sent you to view the remains. You go home, and tell her
+I'll bury ye both, and do it handsome. Go 'long with ye! scat!'
+
+"That was the expression she used, to a senior deacon of the
+congregation she sits in. I believe Satan has a strong hold on that
+old woman. I--I think I will go to my room, wife."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Do you think there is really anything the matter with Aunt Tree?"
+asked Vesta. She had followed the young doctor out into the prim
+little garden, and was picking some late roses as she spoke.
+
+"I can't make out anything," said Geoffrey. "She says she has a pain,
+and tells me to find out where it is, if I know anything; and then
+she laughs in my face, and refuses to answer questions. I think
+Mr. Tree must have had a lively time of it; she's perfectly
+delightful, though. Her pulse and temperature are all right; she
+looks well; of course at that age the slightest breath blows out the
+flame, but I cannot make out that anything is actually wrong. I
+suspect--"
+
+"What?" said Vesta.
+
+"I suspect she simply wanted you to come and stay with her, and made
+this an excuse."
+
+"But I would have come; there was no need of any excuse. I would
+have come in a minute if she had asked me; I am so very much stronger,
+and I love to stay here."
+
+"You won't stay long, though, will you? it can't be necessary, not
+in the least necessary. She is really perfectly well, and we--your
+aunts, that is--the house will be too forlorn without you."
+
+Vesta laughed; she had a delightful laugh.
+
+"You have charming manners!" she said. "I can't help knowing that
+you will really be glad to be rid of me, all but Aunt Vesta; dear
+Aunt Vesta."
+
+"You don't know!" said Geoffrey. "It won't be the same place without
+you."
+
+"Yes, I do know; Aunt Phoebe told me. You said the three of you made
+the perfect triangle, and you wouldn't let in the Czar of Russia or
+the Pope of Rome to spoil it."
+
+"Oh! but that was before--that was when things were entirely
+different!" said Geoffrey. "I--to tell the truth, I think I was about
+twelve years old when I first came to the house. I am growing up a
+little, Miss Blyth, I truly am. And you are not in the least like
+the Czar or the Pope either, and--I wish you would come back. Mayn't
+I have a rose, please?"
+
+"Oh! all you want, I am sure," said Vesta, heartily. "But they are
+not really so pretty as those at home."
+
+"I thought perhaps you would give me one of those in your hand,"
+said Geoffrey, half-timidly. "Thank you! I don't suppose--"
+
+He was about to suggest her pinning it on his coat, but caught sight
+of Mrs. Weight at the opposite window, and refrained.
+
+"Do you know any Spanish?" he asked, abruptly.
+
+"Spanish? no!" said Vesta, looking at him wide-eyed.
+
+"Not even names of flowers?"
+
+"No! how should I? Why do you ask?"
+
+"Oh--nothing! I was thinking of learning it one of these days, but I
+don't believe I shall. Come and walk a little way, won't you? You
+look tired. I can't--you must not stay here if you are going to get
+tired, you know. Old people are very exacting sometimes."
+
+"Oh, I shall not get tired. You can't think how much better I am. No,
+I must go back now, Doctor Strong. Aunt Tree might want something."
+
+"Physician's orders!" said Geoffrey, peremptorily. "Dose of one-half
+mile, to be taken immediately. Won't you please come, Miss Blyth? I--I
+want to tell you about a very interesting case."
+
+Mrs. Weight peered over the window-blind. She was carrying a cup of
+tea to the deacon, who was feeling poorly, but had paused at sight
+of the young couple. "If that girl thinks of making up to that young
+man," she said, "she's got hold of the wrong cob, I can tell her.
+Mira Pettis made him a napkin-holder, worked 'Bonappety' on it in
+cross-stitch on blue satin, and he give it to the girls' cat for a
+collar. I see the cat with it on. I don't want to see no clearer
+than that how he treats young ladies. I wish't Doctor Stedman was
+home."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+
+BROKEN BONES
+
+Another bicycle accident! This time it was a head-on collision, two
+boys riding at each other round a corner, as if for a wager. The
+young doctor had patched them both up, there being no broken bones,
+only a dislocated shoulder and many bruises, and was now riding home,
+reflecting upon the carelessness of the human race in general, and
+of boys in particular. Here was one of the great benefactions of
+modern civilisation, a health-and-pleasure-giving apparatus within
+the reach of all, and often turned into an engine of destruction by
+senseless stupidity. Mrs. Tree would burn all bicycles if she could
+have her way; not that Mrs. Tree was stupid, far from it! Miss
+Phoebe disapproved of them, Miss Vesta feared them, and evidently
+expected his to blow up from day to day. What would they all say if
+they knew that he had been trying to persuade Vesta to ride with him?
+He called her Vesta in his thoughts, merely to distinguish her from
+her aunt. He was quite sure it would be the best possible exercise
+for her, now that she was so much stronger. So far, she had met all
+his representations with her gentle--no! not gentle; Geoffrey would
+be switched if she was gentle; her quiet negative. Her aunts would
+not like it, and there was an end. Well, there wasn't an end! A
+reasonable person ought to listen to reason, and be convinced by it.
+Vesta did not appear to be reasonable yet, but she was intelligent,
+and the rest would come as she grew stronger. And--he had no right
+to say she was not gentle; she could be the gentlest creature that
+ever lived, when it was a question of a child, or a bird, or--
+anything that was hurt, in short. When that little beggar fell down
+the other day and barked his idiotic little shins, the way she took
+him up, and kissed him, and got him to laughing, while he, Geoffrey,
+plastered him up; and it hurt too, getting the gravel out. When that
+violoncello note gets into her voice--well, you know! Yes, she must
+certainly ride the bicycle! What could be more restoring, more
+delightful, than to ride along a country road like this, in the soft
+afternoon, when the heat of the day was over? The honey-clover was
+in blossom; there were clusters of it everywhere, making the whole
+air sweet. Of course he would watch her, keep note of her colour and
+breathing, see that she did not overdo it. Of course it was his
+business to see to all that. What was that the old professor used to
+say?
+
+"There are two hands upon the pulse of life; the detective's, to
+surprise and confound, the physician's, to help and to heal."
+
+It was that, after all, that feeling, that decided one to be a
+physician. If he could do anything to help this beautiful and--yes,
+noble creature, he was bound to do it, wasn't he, whether her aunts
+liked it or not? even, perhaps, whether she herself liked it or not.
+Well, but she would like it, she couldn't help liking it, once she
+tried it. She was built for a rider. He might borrow Miss Flabb's
+wheel for her. It was absurd for Miss Flabb to attempt to ride; she
+would never do enough to take down her flesh, and meantime, being
+near-sighted, she was at the mercy of every stray dog and hen, and
+likely to be run down by the first scorcher on the highroad. Now
+with him, even at the beginning, Vesta would have nothing to fear.
+He would--
+
+At this moment came an interruption. The interruption had four legs,
+and barked. It came from a neighbouring farmhouse, and flew straight
+at the wheel, which was also flying, for the young doctor was apt to
+ride fast when he was thinking. There was a whirl of arms, legs,
+wheels, and tails, a heavy fall,--and the dog ran off on three legs,
+ki-hying to the skies, and the young doctor lay still in the road.
+
+Half an hour later, Mr. Ithuriel Butters stopped at the door of the
+Temple of Vesta. He was driving a pair of comfortable old white
+horses, who went to sleep as soon as he said "Whoa!" He looked up at
+the house, and then behind him in the wagon. Seeing nobody at the
+windows, he looked up and down the street, and was aware of a young
+woman approaching. He hailed her.
+
+"Say, do you know the folks in that house?"
+
+"Yes," said Vesta; "I am staying there."
+
+"Be!" said Mr. Butters. "Wal, Doctor Strong boards there too, don't
+he?"
+
+"Yes; I don't think he is in now, though."
+
+"I know he ain't!" said Ithuriel Butters.
+
+Vesta looked with interest at the stalwart old figure, and strong
+keen face. Most of the wrinkles in the face had come from smiling,
+but it was grave enough now.
+
+"Will you come in and wait," she asked, "or leave a message?"
+
+"Wal, I guess I won't do neither--this time!" said Mr. Butters,
+slowly.
+
+Vesta looked at him in some perplexity; he returned a glance of
+grave meaning.
+
+"You kin to him?" asked the old man. "Sister, or cousin, mebbe?"
+
+"No! what is it? something has happened to Doctor Strong!" Vesta's
+hand tightened on the rail of the steps.
+
+"Keepin' company with him, p'raps?"
+
+"No, oh, no! will you tell me at once, please, and plainly, what has
+happened?"
+
+Vesta spoke quietly; in her normal condition she was always quieter
+when moved; but the colour seemed to fall from her cheeks as her
+eyes followed those of the old man to something that lay long and
+still in the cart behind him.
+
+"Fact is," said Mr. Butters, "I've got him here. 'Pears to be"--the
+strong old voice faltered for an instant--"'pears to be bust up some
+consid'able. I found him in the ro'd a piece back, with his
+velocipede tied up all over him. He ain't dead, nor he ain't asleep,
+but I can't git nothin' out of him, so I jest brung him along. I'll
+h'ist him out, if you say so."
+
+"Can you?" said Vesta. "I will help you. I am strong enough. Will
+your horses stand?"
+
+"They can't fall down, 'count of the shafts," said Mr. Butters,
+clambering slowly down from his seat, "and they won't do nothin' else.
+We'll git him out now, jest as easy. I think a sight of that young
+feller; made me feel bad, I tell ye, to see him there all stove up,
+and think mebbe--"
+
+"Don't, please!" said Vesta. "I am--not very strong--"
+
+"Thought you said you was!" said Ithuriel Butters. "You stand one
+side, then, if it's the same to you. I can carry him as easy as I
+would a baby, and I wouldn't hurt him no more'n I would one."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"There are two hands upon the pulse of life!" said the young doctor.
+
+No one replied to this remark, nor did he appear to expect a reply.
+The room was darkened, and he was lying on his bed; at least some
+one was, he supposed it was himself. There was a smell of drugs. Some
+one had been hurt.
+
+"There are two hands upon the pulse of life," he repeated; "the
+detective's, to surprise--and confound; the phys--phys--what?"
+
+"Physician's," said some one.
+
+"That's it! the physician's, to help and to heal. This appears to be--
+combination--both--"
+
+The hand was removed from his wrist. He frowned heavily, and asked
+if he were a Mohammedan. Receiving no answer, repeated the question
+with some irritation.
+
+"I don't think so," said the same quiet voice. "Then why--turban?"
+he frowned again, and brought the folds of linen lower over his nose.
+They were quietly readjusted. The light, firm hand was laid on his
+forehead for a moment, then once more on his wrist. Then something
+was put to his lips; he was told to drink, and did so. Than he said,
+"My name is Geoffrey Strong. There is nothing the matter with me."
+
+"Yes, I know."
+
+"But--if you take away your hand--I can't hold on, you know."
+
+The hand was laid firmly on his. He sighed comfortably, murmuring
+something about not knowing that violoncellos had hands; dozed a few
+minutes; dragged himself up from unimaginable depths to ask,
+"You are sure you understand that about the pulse?"
+
+Being answered, "Yes, I quite understand," said, "Then you'll see to
+it!" and slept like a baby.
+
+When he woke next morning, it was with an alert and inquisitive eye.
+The eye glanced here and there, taking in details.
+
+"What the--_what_ is all this?"
+
+There was a soft flurry, and Miss Vesta was beside him. "Oh! my dear--
+my dear young friend! thank God, you are yourself again!"
+
+Geoffrey's eyes softened into tenderness as he looked at her.
+"Dear Miss Vesta! what is the matter? I seem to have--" He tried to
+move his right arm, but stopped with a grimace. "I seem to have
+smashed myself. Would it bother you to tell me about it? Stop, though!
+I remember! a dog ran out, and got tangled up in the spokes. Oh, yes,
+I remember. Am I much damaged? arm broken--who set it? that's a nice
+bandage, anyhow. But why the malignant and the turbaned Turk effect?
+is my head broken, too?"
+
+"Oh, no, dear Doctor Strong, nothing malignant; nothing at all of
+that nature, I assure you. Oh, I hope, I hope the arm is properly
+cared for! but it was so unfortunate his being laid up with pleurisy
+just at this time, wasn't it? and a severe contusion on your head,
+you see, so that for some hours we were sadly--but now you are
+entirely yourself, and we are so humbly and devoutly thankful, dear
+Doctor Strong!"
+
+"I think you might say 'Geoffrey,' when I am all broke up!" said the
+boy.
+
+"Geoffrey, dear Geoffrey!" murmured Miss Vesta, patting his sound
+arm softly.
+
+"I think you might sit down by me and tell me all about it. Who is
+laid up with pleurisy? how much am I broken? who brought me home?
+who set my arm? I want to know all about it, please!"
+
+The young doctor spoke with cheerful imperiousness. Miss Vesta
+glanced timorously toward the door, then sat down by the bedside.
+"Hush!" she said, softly. "You must not excite yourself, my dear
+young friend, you must not, indeed. I will tell you all about it, if
+you think--if you are quite sure you ought to be told. You are a
+physician, of course, but she was very anxious that you should not
+be excited."
+
+"Who was anxious? I shall be very much excited if you keep things
+from me, Miss Vesta. I feel my temperature going up this moment."
+
+"Dear! dear!" cried poor Miss Vesta. "Try--to--to restrain it,
+Geoffrey, I implore you. I will--I will tell you at once. As you
+surmise, my dear, a dog--we suppose it to have been a dog, though I
+am not aware that anyone saw the accident. An old man whom you once
+attended--Mr. Butters; you spoke of him, I remember--found you lying
+in the road, my child, quite unconscious. He is an unpolished person,
+but possessed of warm affections. I--I can never forget his tender
+solicitude about you. He brought you home in his wagon, and carried
+you into the house. He volunteered to go to Greening for Doctor Namby--"
+
+"Namby never put on this bandage!" interrupted Geoffrey.
+
+"No, Geoffrey, no! we do not think highly of Doctor Namby, but there
+was no one else, for you seem to feel so strongly about Doctor Pottle--"
+
+"Pottle is a boiled cabbage-head!" said Geoffrey. "He couldn't set a
+hen's leg without tying it in bow-knots, let alone a man's arm. Who
+did set it, Miss Vesta? I'm sure I must be up to 105 by this time. I
+can't answer for the consequences, you know, if--"
+
+"Oh! hush! hush!" cried Miss Vesta. "He had the pleurisy, as I said;
+very badly indeed, poor man, so that he was quite, quite invalided--"
+
+"Pottle had? serve him--"
+
+"No, no, Geoffrey; Doctor Namby had. And so--she was quite positive
+she understood the case, and--Mr. Butters upheld her--oh, I trust, I
+trust I did not do wrong in allowing her to take so grave a
+responsibility--Sister Phoebe in bed with her erysipelas--Geoffrey--
+you will not be angry, my dear young friend? Little Vesta set the arm!"
+
+The word finally spoken, Miss Vesta sat panting quickly and softly,
+like a frightened bird, her eyes fixed anxiously on the young doctor.
+
+The young doctor whistled; then considered the arm again with keen
+scrutiny.
+
+"The de--that is--she did, did she?" he said, half to himself. He
+felt it all over with his sound hand, and inspected it again.
+"Well, it's a mighty good job," he said, "whoever did it."
+
+Miss Vesta's sigh of relief was almost a gasp. Geoffrey looked up
+quickly, and saw her gentle eyes brimming with tears.
+
+"You dear angel!" he cried, taking her hand. "I have made you anxious.
+I am a brute--a cuttlefish--hang me, somebody, do!"
+
+"Oh! hush, hush! my boy!" cried the little lady, wiping away her
+tears. "It was only--the relief, Geoffrey. To feel that you are not
+angry at her--Sister Phoebe would call it presumption, but Vesta did
+not _mean_ to be presumptuous, Geoffrey--and that you think it is
+not so ill done as I feared. I--I am so happy, that is all, my dear!"
+
+She wept silently, and Geoffrey lay and called himself names.
+Presently--"Where is she?" he asked.
+
+"Sister Phoebe? she is still in bed, and suffering a good deal. I am
+continuing the remedies you gave her. I--I have thought it best to
+let her suppose that Doctor Namby had attended you, Geoffrey. She is
+very nervous, and I feared to excite her."
+
+Geoffrey commended her wisdom, but made it clear that he was not
+thinking of Miss Phoebe. Couldn't he see Miss Little Vesta? he asked.
+He wanted to--to thank her for what she had done, and ask just how
+she had done it. There were all sorts of details--in short, it was
+important that he should see her at once. Asleep? Why--it seemed
+unreasonable that she should be asleep at this hour of the morning.
+Was she not well?
+
+"She--she watched by you most of the night!" Miss Vesta confessed.
+"Your head--she was afraid of congestion, and wanted the cloths
+changed frequently. She would not let me sit up, Geoffrey, though I
+begged her to let me do so. She will come as soon as she wakes, I am
+sure."
+
+"I told you I was a cuttlefish!" said Geoffrey. "Now you see! I--I
+believe I am getting sleepy again, Miss Vesta. What is that pretty
+thing you have around your neck? Did she sit in that chair? What a
+fool a man is when he is asleep!"
+
+Seeing his eyelids droop, Miss Vesta moved softly away; was called
+back at the door, and found him looking injured. "You haven't tucked
+me up!" he said.
+
+Miss Vesta tucked him up with delicate precision, and drew the snowy
+counterpane into absolute smoothness. "There!" she said, her gentle
+eyes beaming with maternal pleasure. "Is there anything else, dear
+doctor--I mean dear Geoffrey?"
+
+"No, nothing--unless--I don't suppose angels ever kiss people, do
+they?"
+
+Very pink indeed, even to her pretty little ears, Miss Vesta stooped
+and deposited a very small and very timid kiss on his forehead; then
+slipped away like a little shocked ghost, wondering what Sister
+Phoebe would say.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+
+CONVALESCENCE
+
+"Where did you get your splints?" asked Geoffrey. "Was this thing
+all arranged beforehand? you confess to the bandages in your trunk."
+
+Vesta laughed. "Your poor cigars! I tumbled them out of their box
+with very little ceremony. See them, scattered all over the table! I
+must put them tidy."
+
+She moved to the table, and began piling the cigars in a hollow
+square. "A cigar-box makes excellent splints," she said; "did you
+ever try it?"
+
+But Geoffrey was thinking what a singular amount of light a white
+dress seemed to bring into a room, and did not immediately reply.
+
+When he did speak, he said, "You watched me--I kept you up all night.
+I ought to be shot."
+
+"That would be twice as troublesome," said Vesta, gravely; "I can
+set an arm, but I don't know anything about wounds, except
+theoretically. Perhaps you would'nt like theoretic treatment."
+
+"Perhaps not. Was there--it seems a perfectly absurd question to ask,
+but--well, was any one playing the 'cello here last night? why do
+you laugh?"
+
+"Only because you seem to have the 'cello so on your mind. You said
+such funny things last night, while you were light-headed, you know."
+
+Geoffrey became conscious of the roots of his hair. "What did I say?"
+he asked.
+
+"You seemed to think that some one was playing the 'cello; or rather,
+you fancied there was a 'cello in the room, and it seemed to be
+endowed with life. You said, 'I didn't know that 'cellos had hands!'
+and then you asked if it spoke Spanish. I couldn't help laughing a
+little at that, and you were quite short with me, and told me I that
+didn't know phlox from flaxseed. It was very curious!"
+
+"Must have been!" said Geoffrey, dryly. "I'm only thankful--was that
+the worst thing I said?"
+
+"Wasn't that bad enough? yes, that was the very worst. I am going
+out now, Doctor Strong. Is there anything I can do for you?"
+
+"Going out!" repeated Geoffrey, in dismay.
+
+"Yes. I have some errands to do. What is it?" for the cloud on his
+brow was unmistakable.
+
+"Oh--nothing! I thought you were going to see to this crack in my
+skull, but it's no matter."
+
+"It is hardly two hours since I dressed it," said Vesta. "I thought
+you said it felt very comfortable."
+
+"Well--it did; but it hurts now, considerably. No matter, though, if
+you are busy I dare say I could get Pottle to come in sometime in
+the course of the day."
+
+He had the grace to be ashamed of himself, when Vesta brought basin
+and sponge, and began quietly and patiently to dress the injured
+temple.
+
+"I know I am fractious," he said, plaintively. "I can't seem to help
+it."
+
+He looked up, and saw her clear eyes intent and full of light.
+
+"It is healing beautifully!" she said. "I wish you could see it;
+it's a lovely colour now."
+
+"It's a shame to give you all this trouble," said Geoffrey, trying
+to feel real contrition.
+
+"Oh, but I like it!" he was cheerfully assured. "It's delightful to
+see a cut like this."
+
+"Thank you!" said Geoffrey. "I used to feel that way myself."
+
+"And the callous is going to form quickly in the arm, I am sure of it!"
+said Vesta, with shining eyes. "I am so pleased with you, Doctor
+Strong! And now--there! is that all right? Take the glass and see if
+you like the looks of it. I think the turban effect is rather
+becoming. Now--is there any one you would like me to go and see
+while I am out? Of course--I have no diploma, nothing of the sort,
+but I could carry out your orders faithfully, and report to you."
+
+"Oh, you are very good!" said Geoffrey. "But--you would be gone all
+the--I mean--your aunts might need you, don't you think?"
+
+"No, indeed! Aunt Phoebe is better--I gave her the drops, and Aunt
+Vesta is bathing her now with the lotion--I can take the afternoon
+perfectly well. Your case-book? this one? no, truly, Doctor Strong,
+it will be a pleasure, a real pleasure."
+
+"You're awfully good!" said Geoffrey, ruefully.
+
+"It is the _most_ unfortunate combination I ever heard of!" said
+Miss Phoebe Blyth.
+
+Miss Phoebe was in bed, too, and suffering very considerable
+discomfort. Erysipelas is not a thing to speak lightly of; and if it
+got into Miss Phoebe's temper as well as into her eyes, this was not
+to be wondered at.
+
+Miss Vesta murmured some soothing words, and bathed the angry red
+places gently; but Miss Phoebe was not to be soothed.
+
+"It is all very well for you, Vesta," said the poor lady, "you have
+never had any responsibility; of course it is not to be supposed
+that you should have, with what you have gone through. But with all
+I have on _my_ shoulders, to be laid up in this way is--really, I
+must say!"
+
+This last remark was the sternest censure that Miss Phoebe was ever
+known to bestow upon the Orderings of Providence.
+
+"Has Doctor Pottle attended to the doctor's arm this morning?"
+
+This was the question Miss Vesta had been dreading. She pretended
+not to hear it; but it was repeated with incisive severity.
+
+"You are getting a little hard of hearing, Vesta. I asked you, has
+Doctor Strong's arm been attended to this morning?"
+
+"Yes! oh, yes, Sister Phoebe, it has. And--it is healing finely, and
+so is his head. She says--I mean--"
+
+"You mean _he_ says!" said Miss Phoebe, with a superior air.
+"This excitement is too much for you, Vesta. We shall have you
+breaking down next. I do not know that I care to hear precisely what
+Doctor Pottle says. In such an emergency as this we were forced to
+call him in, but I have a poor opinion of his skill, and none of his
+intelligence. If our dear Doctor Strong is doing well, that is all I
+need to know."
+
+"Yes, Sister Phoebe," acquiesced Miss Vesta, with silent thanksgiving.
+
+"When you next visit Doctor Strong's room," Miss Phoebe continued,--
+"I regret that you should be obliged to do so, my dear Vesta, but
+the disparity in your years is so great as to obviate any glaring
+impropriety, and besides, there seems to be no help for it,--when
+you next visit him, I beg you to give him my kindest--yes! I am
+convinced that there can be no--you may say my affectionate regards,
+Vesta. Tell him that I find myself distinctly better to-day, thanks,
+no doubt, to the remedies he has prescribed; and that I trust in a
+short time to be able to give my personal supervision to his recovery.
+You may point out to him that a period of seclusion and meditation,
+even when not unmixed with suffering, may often be productive of
+beneficial results, moral as well as physical; and in a mind like his--
+hark! what is that sound, Vesta?"
+
+Miss Vesta listened. "I think--it is Doctor Strong," she said.
+"I think he is singing, Sister Phoebe. I cannot distinguish the words;
+very likely some hymn his mother taught him. Dear lad!"
+
+"He has a beautiful spirit!" said Miss Phoebe; "there are less
+signs of active piety than I could wish, but he has a beautiful
+spirit. Yes, you are right, it is a hymn, Vesta."
+
+Even if Miss Vesta had distinguished the words, it would have made
+little difference, since she did not understand Italian. For this is
+what the young doctor was singing:
+
+  "Voi che sapete che cosa e l'amor,
+  Donne, vedete s'io l'ho nel cuor!"
+
+The sisters listened; Miss Phoebe erect among her pillows, her
+nightcap tied in a rigid little bow under her chin; Miss Vesta
+sitting beside her, wistful and anxious, full of tender solicitude
+for sister, friend, niece,--in fact, for all her little world. But
+neither of them could tell the young doctor what he wanted to know.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was near sunset when Vesta came again into the young doctor's room.
+He was sitting in the big armchair by the window. He was cross, and
+thought medicine a profession for dogs.
+
+"I trust you have enjoyed your afternoon!" he said, morosely. Then
+he looked up at the radiant face and happy eyes, and told himself
+that he was a squid; cuttlefish was too good a name for him.
+
+Vesta smiled and nodded, a little out of breath.
+
+"I ran up-stairs!" she said. "I didn't think, and I just ran. I am
+well, Doctor Strong, do you realise it? Oh, it is so wonderful! It
+is worth it all, every bit, to feel the spring coming back. You told
+me it would, you know; I didn't believe you, and I hasten to do
+homage to your superior intelligence. Hail, Solomon! Yes, I have had
+a most delightful afternoon, and now you shall hear all about it."
+
+She sat down, and took out the note-book. Geoffrey had been
+wondering all the afternoon what colour her eyes were, now that they
+had ceased to be dark agates. "I know now!" he said. "They are like
+Mary Donnelly's."
+
+  "'Her eyes like mountain water
+    Where it's running o'er a rock.'"
+
+
+"Whose eyes?" asked Vesta. "Not Luella Slocum's? I was just going to
+tell you about her."
+
+"No, not hers. How is she? You must have had a sweet time there."
+
+Vesta gave her head a backward shake--it was a pretty way she had--
+and laughed. "I am sure I did her good," she said. "She was so angry
+at my coming, so sure I didn't know anything, and so consumed with
+desire to know what and where and how long I had studied, and what
+my father was thinking of to allow me, and what my mother would have
+said if she had lived to see the day, and what my aunts would say as
+it was, that she actually forgot her _tic_, poor soul, and talked a
+great deal, and freed her mind. It's a great thing to free the mind.
+But she said I need not call again; and--I'm afraid I have got you
+into disgrace, too, for when I said that you would come as soon as
+you were able, she sniffed, and said she would let you know if she
+wanted you. I am sorry!"
+
+"Are you?" said Geoffrey. "I am not. She will send for Pottle
+to-morrow, and he will suit her exactly. Where else did you go?"
+
+Several cases were given in detail, and for a time the talk was
+sternly professional. Geoffrey found his questions answered clearly
+and directly, with no superfluous words; moreover, there seemed to
+be judgment and intelligence. Well, he always said that one woman in
+ten thousand might--
+
+Coming to the last case in the book, Vesta's face lightened into
+laughter.
+
+"Oh, those Binney children!" she said. "They were so funny and dear!
+I had a delightful time there. They were all much better,--Paul's
+fever entirely gone, and Ellie's throat hardly inflamed at all. They
+wanted to get up, but I didn't think they would better before
+to-morrow, so we played menagerie, and had a great time."
+
+"Played menagerie?"
+
+"Yes. I made a hollow square with the cribs and some chairs, and
+they were the lions, and I was the tamer. We played for an hour,--
+Mrs. Binney was tired, and I made her go and lie down,--and then I
+sang them to sleep, dear little lambs, and came away and left them."
+
+"I see!" said Geoffrey. "That is what made you so late. Do you think
+it's exactly professional to play menagerie for an hour and a half
+with your patients?"
+
+Vesta laughed; the happy sound of her laughter fretted his nerves.
+
+"I suppose that is the way you will practise, when you have taken
+your degree!" he said, disagreeably.
+
+The girl flushed, and the happy light left her eyes. "Don't talk of
+that!" she said. "I told you I had given it up once and for all."
+
+"But you are well now; and--I am bound to say--you seem in many ways
+qualified for a physician. You might try again when you are entirely
+strong."
+
+"And break down again? thank you. No; I have proved to myself that I
+cannot do it, and there is an end."
+
+"Then--it's no business of mine, of course--what will you do?" asked
+Geoffrey. His ill-temper was dying out. The sound of her voice, so
+full, so even, so cordial, filled him like wine. He wanted her to go
+on talking; it did not matter much about what.
+
+"What will you do?" he repeated, as the girl remained silent.
+
+"Oh, I don't know! I suppose I shall just be a plain woman the rest
+of my life."
+
+"I don't think plain is exactly the word!" said Geoffrey.
+
+"You didn't think 'pretty' was!" said Vesta; and, with a flash of
+laughter, she was gone.
+
+Geoffrey had not wanted her to go. He had been alone all the
+afternoon. (Ah, dear Miss Vesta! was it solitude, the patient hour
+you spent by his side, reading to him, chatting, trying your best to
+cheer the depression that you partly saw, partly divined? yes; for
+when an experiment in soul-chemistry is going on, it is one element,
+and one only, that can produce the needed result!) He had been alone,
+I say, all the afternoon, and his head ached, and there were shooting
+pains in his arm, and--he used to think it would be so interesting
+to break a bone, that one would learn so much better in that kind of
+way. Well, he was learning, learning no end; only you wanted some
+one to talk it over with. There was no fun in knowing things if
+there was no one to tell about them. And--anyhow, this bandage was
+getting quite dry, or it would be soon. There was the bowl of water
+on the stand beside him, but he could not change bandages with one
+hand. He heard Vesta stirring about in her room, the room next his.
+She was singing softly to herself; it didn't trouble her much that
+he was all alone, and suffering a good deal. She had a cold nature.
+Absurd for a person to be singing to chairs and tables, when other
+people--
+
+He coughed; coughed again; sighed long and audibly. The soft singing
+stopped; was she--
+
+No! it went on again. He knew the tune, but he could not hear the
+words. There was nothing so exasperating as not to be able to place
+a song.--
+
+Crash! something shivered on the floor. Vesta came running, the song
+still on her lips. Her patient was flushed, and looked studiously
+out of the window.
+
+"What is it? Oh, the bowl! I am so sorry! How did it happen?"
+
+"It--fell down!" said Geoffrey.
+
+Vesta was on her knees, picking up the pieces, sopping the spilt
+water with a towel. He regarded her with remorseful triumph.
+
+"You were singing!" he said, at length.
+
+"Was I? did I disturb you? I won't--"
+
+"No! I don't mean that. I wanted to hear the words. I--I threw the
+bowl down on purpose."
+
+Vesta looked up in utter amazement; meeting the young doctor's eyes,
+something in them brought the lovely colour flooding over her face
+and neck.
+
+"That was childish!" she said, quietly, and went on picking up the
+pieces. "It was a valuable bowl."
+
+"I am--feverish!" said Geoffrey. "This bandage is getting dry, and I
+am all prickles."
+
+Vesta hesitated a moment; then she laid her hand on his forehead.
+"You have _no_ fever!" she said. "You are flushed and restless, but--
+Doctor Strong, this is convalescence!"
+
+"Is that what you call it?" said Geoffrey.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+
+RECOVERY
+
+"Feelin' real smart, be ye?" asked Mr. Ithuriel Butters. "Wal, I'm
+pleased to hear it."
+
+Mr. Butters sat in the young doctor's second armchair, and looked at
+him with friendly eyes. His broad back was turned to the window, but
+Geoffrey faced it, and the light showed his face pale, indeed, but
+full of returning health and life; his arm was still in a sling, but
+his movements otherwise were free and unrestrained.
+
+"You're lookin' fust-rate," said Mr. Butters. "Some different from
+the last time I see ye."
+
+"I wonder what would have become of me if you had not happened along
+just then, Mr. Butters," said Geoffrey. "I think I owe you a great
+deal more than you are willing to acknowledge."
+
+"Nothin' at all; nothin' at all!" said the old man, briskly.
+"I h'isted ye up out the ro'd, that was all; I sh'd have had to
+h'ist jest the same if ye'd be'n a critter or a lawg, takin' up the
+hull ro'd the way ye did."
+
+"And how about bringing me home, three miles out of your way, and
+carrying me up-stairs, and all that? I suppose you would have done
+all that for a critter, eh?"
+
+"Wal--depends upon the value of the critter!" said Mr. Butters, with
+a twinkle. "I never kep' none of mine up-stairs, but there's no
+knowin' these days of fancy stock. No, young man! if there's anybody
+for you to thank, it's that young woman. Now there's a gal--what's
+her name? I didn't gather it that day."
+
+"Vesta--Miss Vesta Blyth."
+
+"I want to know! my fust wife's name was Vesty; Vesty Barlow she was;
+yes, sir. I do'no' but I liked her best of any of 'em. Not but what
+I've had good ones since, but 'twas different then, seems' though.
+She was the ch'ice of my youth, ye see. Yes, sir; Vesty is a good
+name, and that's a good gal, if I know anything about gals. She's no
+kin to you, she said."
+
+"No; none whatever."
+
+"Nor yet you ain't keepin' company with her?"
+
+"No-o!" cried Geoffrey, wincing.
+
+"Ain't you asked her?"
+
+"No! please don't--"
+
+"Why not?" demanded Mr. Butters, with ample severity.
+
+Geoffrey tried to laugh, and failed. "I--I can't talk about these
+things, Mr. Butters."
+
+"Don't you want her?" the old man went on, pitilessly. Geoffrey
+looked up angrily; looked up, and met a look so kind and true and
+simple, that his anger died, still-born.
+
+"Yes!" he said. "God knows I do. But you are wholly mistaken in
+thinking--that is--she wouldn't have me."
+
+"I expect she would!" said Ithuriel Butters. "I expect that is jest
+what she would have. I see her when you was layin' there, all stove
+up; you might have be'n barrel-staves, the way you looked. I see her
+face, and I don't need to see no more."
+
+Geoffrey tried to say something about kindness and womanly pity, but
+the strong old voice bore him down.
+
+"I know what pity looks like, and I know the other thing. She's no
+soft-heart to squinch at the sight of blood, and that sort of foolery.
+Tell ye, she was jest as quiet and cool as if 'twas a church sociable,
+and she set that bone as easy and chirk as my woman would take a pie
+out the oven; but when she had you all piecened up, and stood and
+looked at you--wal, there!"
+
+"Don't! I cannot let you!" cried Geoffrey. His voice was full of
+distress; but was it the western sun that made his face so bright?
+
+"Wal, there's all kinds of fools," said Mr. Butters. "Got the
+teethache?"
+
+"Toothache? no! why?"
+
+"Thought you hollered as if ye had. How would you go to work to cure
+the teethache now, s'posin' you had it?"
+
+"I should go to a dentist, and let him cure it for me."
+
+"S'posin' you lived ten mile from a dentist, young feller? you're
+too used to settin' in the middle of creation and jerkin' the reins
+for the hoss to go. Jonas E. Homer had the teethache once, bad."
+
+He paused.
+
+"Well," said the young doctor, "who was Jonas E. Homer, and how did
+he cure his toothache?"
+
+"Jonas Elimelech was his full name," said Mr. Butters, settling
+himself comfortably in his chair. "He's neighbour to me, about five
+miles out on the Buffy Landin' ro'd. Yes, he had the teethache bad.
+Wife wanted him to go and have 'em hauled, but he said he wouldn't
+have no feller goin' fishin' in _his_ mouth. No, sir! he went and he
+bored a hole in the northeast side of a beech-tree, and put in a
+hair of a yaller dawg, and then plugged up the hole with a pine plug.
+That was ten years ago, and he's never had the teethache sence. He
+told me that himself."
+
+"It's a good story," said the young doctor. "Do you believe it,
+Mr. Butters?"
+
+"Wal, I do'no' as I exactly believe it; I was sort of illustratin'
+the different kinds of fools there was in the world, that's all."
+
+They were silent. The sun went down, but the light stayed in the
+young doctor's face.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There was a commotion in the room below. Voices were raised,
+feminine voices, shrill with excitement. Then came a bustle on the
+stairs, and the sound of feet; then one voice, breathless but decided.
+
+"I tell ye, I know the way. There's no need to show me, and I won't
+have it. I haven't been up these stairs for near seventy years,
+Phoebe, since the day of your caudle-party, but I know the way as
+well as you do, and I'll thank you to stay where you are."
+
+The next moment the door opened, and Mrs. Tree stood on the threshold,
+panting and triumphant. Her black eyes twinkled with affection and
+malice. "Well, young sir!" she said, as Geoffrey ran to give her his
+sound arm, and led her in, and placed her in the seat of honour.
+"Fine doings since I last saw you! Humph! you look pretty well,
+considering all. Who's this? Ithuriel Butters! How do you do,
+Ithuriel? I haven't seen you for forty years, but I should know you
+in the Fiji Islands."
+
+"I should know you, too, anywhere, Mis' Tree!" responded Mr. Butters,
+heartily. "I'm rejoicin' glad to see ye."
+
+"You wear well, Ithuriel," said Mrs. Tree, kindly. "If you would cut
+all that mess of hair and beard, you would be a good-looking man
+still; but I didn't come here to talk to you."
+
+She turned to Geoffrey in some excitement. "I'll speak right out,"
+she said. "Now's now, and next time's never. I've let the cat out of
+the bag. Phoebe has found out about little Vesta's setting your arm
+and all, and she's proper mad. Says she'll send the child home
+to-morrow for good and all. She's getting on her shoes this minute;
+I never could abide those morocco shoes. She'll be up here in no time.
+I thought I'd come up first and tell you."
+
+She looked eagerly at the young doctor; but his eyes were fixed on
+the window, and he scarcely seemed to hear her. Following his gaze,
+she saw a white dress glimmering against the soft dusk of the garden
+shrubs.
+
+The young doctor rose abruptly; took one step; paused, and turned to
+his guest of ninety years with a little passionate gesture of appeal
+"I--cannot leave you," he said; "unless--just one moment--"
+
+"My goodness gracious _me_!" cried Mrs. Tree. "Go this minute, child;
+_run_, do you hear? I'll take care of Ithuriel Butters. He was in
+my Sunday-school class, though he's only five years younger than me.
+Take care and don't fall!"
+
+The last words were uttered in a small shriek, for apparently there
+had been but one step to the staircase.
+
+Breathless, the old woman turned and faced the old man. "Have you
+got any bumblebees in your pocket this time, Ithuriel?" she asked.
+
+"No,'m," said Ithuriel, soberly. Then they both stared out of the
+window with eyes that strove to be as young as they were eager.
+
+[Illustration: "Then he comes, full chisel!" cried Ithuriel Butters.]
+
+"There he comes, full chisel!" cried Ithuriel Butters. "She don't
+see him. He's hollerin' to her. She's turned round. I tell ye--he's
+grabbed holt of her hand! he's grabbed holt of both her hands! he's--"
+
+Who says that heroism dies with youth? Marcia Tree raised her little
+mitted hand, and pulled down the blind.
+
+"It's no business of yours or mine what he's doing, Ithuriel Butters!"
+she said, with dignity.
+
+Then she began to tremble. "Seventy years ago," she said, "Ira Tree
+proposed to me in that very garden, under that very syringa-tree.
+I've been a widow fifty years, Ithuriel, and it seems like yesterday."
+And a dry sob clicked in her throat.
+
+"I've buried two good wives," said Mr. Butters, "and my present one
+seems to be failin' up some. I hope she'll live now, I reelly do."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Vesta!" Miss Phoebe's voice rang sharp and shrill through the house.
+Miss Vesta started. She was at her evening post in the upper hall.
+The lamp was lighted, the prayer had been said.
+
+"Dear Lord, I beseech thee, protect all souls at sea this night; for
+Jesus Christ's sake. Amen!"
+
+But Miss Vesta was not watching the sea this time. Her eyes, too,
+were bent down upon the twilight garden. The lamplight fell softly
+there, and threw into relief the two figures pacing up and down,
+hand in hand, heart in heart. Miss Vesta could not hear, and would
+not if she could have heard, the words her children were saying; her
+heart was lifted as high as heaven, in peace and joy and thankfulness,
+and the words that sounded in her ear were spoken by a voice long
+silent in death.
+
+"Vesta!"
+
+Miss Phoebe's voice rang sharp and shrill through the silent house.
+Instinct and habit answered the call at once. "Yes, Sister Phoebe!"
+
+"Stay where you are! I am coming to you. I have discovered--"
+
+The figures below paused full in the lamplight. Two faces shone out,
+one all on fire with joy and wonder, the other sweet and white as
+the white flower at her breast.
+
+Miss Phoebe's morocco shoes creaked around the corner of the passage.
+
+"Good Lord, forgive me, and save all souls at sea just the same!"
+said Miss Vesta; and she blew out the lamp.
+
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, GEOFFREY STRONG ***
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