Having thus innocently damned poor Pat with the suspicion of a dreadful malady, Sommers made a scientific attempt to soothe Helen May’s fears.  He advised, with many words and much kind intent, that Pat be muzzled until the “hyperaesthesia” did or did not develop.  Helen May thought that the terribly-termed symptoms might develop before they could get a muzzle from town, but she did not like to say so.

Partly to be hospitable, and partly to get away from Pat, she mounted the pinto, told Pat to watch the goats, and rode down to the house to see Martha Sommers.  She did not anticipate any pleasure in the visit, much as she had longed for the sound of a woman’s voice.  She was really worried half to death over Starr, and the rabies, and Pat, and the nagging consciousness that she had not accomplished as much copying of manuscript as Holman Sommers probably expected.

She did not hear half of what Sommers was saying on the way to the cabin.  His very amiability jarred upon her nervous depression.  She had always liked him, and respected his vast learning, but to-day she certainly did not get much comfort out of his converse.  She wondered why she had been so light-hearted while Starr was with her showing her how to shoot, and lecturing her about the danger of going gunless abroad; and why she was so perfectly dejected when Holman Sommers talked to her about the very same thing.  Starr had certainly painted things blacker than Holman had done, but it did not seem to have the same effect.

“I don’t see what we’re going to do for a muzzle,” she launched suddenly into the middle of Holman Sommers’ scientific explanation of mirages.

“Vic can undoubtedly construct one out of an old strap,” Holman Sommers retorted impatiently, and went on discoursing about refraction and reflection and the like.

Helen May tried to follow him, and gave it up.  When they were almost to the spring she again unwittingly jarred Holman Sommers out of his subject.

“Did all those words you used mean that Pat will foam at the mouth like mad dogs you read about?” she asked abruptly.

Holman Sommers, tramping along beside the pinto, looked at her queerly.  “If Pat does not, I strongly suspect that I shall,” he told her weightily, but with a twinkle in his eyes.  “I have been endeavoring, Miss Stevenson, to wean your thoughts away from so unhappy a subject.  Why permit yourself to be worried?  The thing will happen, or it will not happen.  If it does happen, you will be powerless to prevent.  If it does not, you will have been anxious over a chimera of the imagination.”

“Chimera of the imagination is a good line,” laughed Helen May flippantly.  “All the same, if Pat is going to gallop all over the scenery, foaming at the mouth and throwing fits at the sight of water—­”

“As a matter of fact,” Holman Sommers was beginning again in his most instructive tone, when a whoop from the spring interrupted him.