The doctor looked at her for a moment and then, catching her point, gave her a hearty laugh for answer, and walking to his table, took up a sheet of manuscript and carried it to the room where Miss Drane was working.

“The passage which so puzzled you,” he said, “has been deciphered by Mrs. Tolbridge and myself, and reads thus:  ’The philosophy of physiological contrasts grows.’”

“Why, yes,” said Cicely, looking at the paper; “now that you tell me what it is, it is as plain as can be.  I will write it in the blank space that I have left, and here are some more words that I would like to ask you about.”

“Not now, not now,” said the doctor.  “I want you to stop work and run home.  As soon as I can I will talk with you about what you have written, and give you some more of the manuscript.  But no more work for to-day.  You must hurry to your mother.  You will find Mrs. Tolbridge there, talking to her about a change of quarters.”

“Another holiday!” exclaimed Cicely, in surprise.

She was a girl who worked earnestly and conscientiously with the intention of earning every cent of the money which was paid to her, and these successive intermissions of work seemed to her unbusiness-like.  But she made no objections, and, putting away her papers, with a sigh, for she had a list of points about which she was ready and anxious to consult the doctor,—­she went to join the consultation, which she presumed concerned their removal from one street in Thorbury to another.  But when she discovered the heavenly prospect which had opened before her mother and herself, her mind bounded from all thoughts of the manuscript of the “Diagnosis of Sympathy,” as if it had been a lark mounting to the sky.

CHAPTER XXV

BOMBSHELLS AND BROMIDE

About noon on the next day, Mrs. Tolbridge sat down at her desk to finish the writing of the letter which had been so abruptly broken off the day before.  She had been very busy that afternoon and a part of this morning, assisting Mrs. Drane and her daughter in their removal from a hot street in a little town to the broad freedom and fine air of a spacious country home.

And this change had given so much pleasure to all parties concerned that it was natural that so good a woman as Mrs. Tolbridge should feel a glow of satisfaction in thinking of the part she had taken in it.

She was satisfied in more ways than one:  it was agreeable to her to assist in giving pleasure to others, but besides this, she had a little satisfaction which was peculiarly her own; she was pleased that that very pretty and attractive Cicely would now work for the doctor, instead of working so much with him.  Of course she was willing to give up the little room if it were needed, but it was a great deal pleasanter not to have it needed.

“It is so seldom,” she thought, as she lifted the lid of her desk, “that things can be arranged so as to please everybody.”