“Oh, don’t mind me,” cried Miss Clopsey, a parched maiden of twoscore.  “I can wait just as well as not.  Where is the pain, Miss Panney?  Were you took sudden?”

“Like the pop of a jackbox.  Come, doctor, I must see you in the parlor.”

“Can I do anything?” asked Miss Clopsey, rising.  “How dreadful!  Shall I go for hot water?”

“Oh, don’t be alarmed,” said Miss Panney, hurrying the amazed doctor out of the room; “it is chronic.  He will be back in no time.”

Miss Clopsey, left alone in the office, sank back in her chair.

“Chronic by jerks,” she sighed; “there can be few things worse than that; and at her age, too!”

“What can be the matter?” asked the doctor, as the two stood in the parlor.

“It is an idea,” said Miss Panney; “you cannot think with what violence it seized me.  Doctor, what became of that book you wrote on the ’Diagnosis of Sympathy’?”

The doctor opened his eyes in astonishment.

“Nothing has become of it.  It has been in my desk for two years.  I have not had time even to copy it.”

“And of course your writing could not be trusted to a printer.  Now what you should do is this:  employ that Drane girl to copy your manuscript.  She can do it here, and if she comes to a word she cannot make out, she can ask you.  That will keep her going until autumn, and by that time we can get her some scholars.”

“Miss Panney,” said the doctor, “are you going crazy?  I cannot afford charity on that scale.”

“Charity!” repeated the old lady, sarcastically.  “A pretty word to use.  By that sort of charity you give yourself one of the greatest of earthly blessings, in the shape of La Fleur, and you get out a book which will certainly be a benefit to the world, and will, I believe, bring you fame and profit.  And you are frightened by the paltry sum that will be necessary to pay the board of the girl and her mother for perhaps two months.  Now do not condemn this plan until you have had time to consider it.  Go back to your Clopsey; I am going to find Mrs. Tolbridge and talk to her.”

CHAPTER XX

THE TEABERRY GOWN IS TOO LARGE

When Dora Bannister had gone away in Miss Panney’s phaeton, Miriam walked gravely into the house, followed by her brother.

“Now,” said she, “I must go to work in earnest.”

“Work!” exclaimed Ralph.  “I think you have been working a good deal harder than you ought to work, and certainly a good deal harder than I intend you to work.  As soon as he has had his dinner, Mike shall take the wagon, and go after the woman Miss Panney told us of.”