“Sit down and I will tell you what I mean.”

* * * * *

The patients, taking soon after their two hours’ exercise, made their jokes on the battle between the two systems, seeing the allopathist McCall and Doctor Maria Haynes Muller in the summer-house engaged in such long and earnest converse.  Homoeopathy, they guessed, had the worst of it, for the lady was visibly agitated and McCall apparently unmoved.  Indeed, when he left her and crossed the garden, nodding to such of them as he knew, he had a satisfied, relieved face.

Maria went immediately in to visit her ward as usual.  The patients observed that she was milder than was her wont, and deadly pale.  One of them, addressing her as “Miss Muller,” however, was sharply rebuked:  “I earned my right to the title of physician too hardly to give it up for that which belongs to every simpering school-girl,” she said.  “Besides,” with a queer pitiful smile, “the sooner we doctors sink the fact that we are women the better for the cause—­and for us.”

She met her brother in the course of the morning, and drew him into the consulting-room.

“William,” she said, fumbling with the buttons of his coat, “he is going:  he is going to take the afternoon train.”

“Who?  That fellow McCall?”

“Why do you speak so of him, William?  He has just told me his story.  He is so wretched! he has been used so hardly!” She could scarcely keep back the tears.  In her new weakness and weariness it was such comfort to talk to and hang upon this fat, stupid little brother, whom usually she despised.

“Wretched, eh?  He don’t look it, then.  As stout and easy-going a fellow as I know.  Come, come, Maria!  The man has been imposing some story on you to work on your sensibilities.  I never fancied him, as you know.  He doesn’t want to borrow money, eh?” with sudden alarm.

“Money?  No.”

“What is it, then?  Don’t look at me in that dazed way.  You, are going to have one of your attacks.  I do wish you had Kitty’s constitution and some sense.”

“William,” rousing herself, “he is going.  He will never come back to Berrytown or to me.  Our whole lives depend on my seeing him once more.  Ask him to wait for a day—­an hour.”

“If he doesn’t take the noon express, he can’t go in an hour.  You certainly know that, Maria.  Well, if I have to find him, I’d better go at once,” buttoning his coat irritably.  “I never did like the fellow.”

“Beg him to stay.  Tell him that I have thought of a way of escape,” following him, catching him by his sleeve, her small face absolutely without color and her eyes glittering.

“Yes, I’m going.  But I must find my overshoes first.  It begins to look like rain.”