“We never are,” said the doctor bluntly.  “But have you not told Aunt Janet about the headaches?”

“Oh no—­she’d think it was silly.”

“Then I’d tell Jean, Marcella,” said the doctor hurriedly.  “If you’re not feeling well, just tell Jean, and maybe she’ll be bringing you along to see me.”  Then he added.  “But to-night I’ll send the lad along with medicine for the neuralgia.”

They talked about her father, then, and presently she surprised him by saying earnestly: 

“Doctor, why is it that people get ill?”

He laughed and chuckled at her puzzled frown.

“Well!  There’s a question to ask a man after his dinner.  Do you know it took me the best part of seven years at the hospital to learn the answer?  And even now my knowledge is not what you might call exhaustive.”

“It seems so queer—­mother being ill, and father; then Jean’s headaches and my neuralgia.  And Wullie all twisted up.”

The doctor let the reins drop on the horse’s neck and lighted a very old pipe.  He had very little chance of a talk, and was glad to talk, even to a girl.

“Just in those people you’ve mentioned, Marcella, you’ve almost every cause of illness.”  He paused, puffed at the pipe and went on, “Wullie—­he was born like it.”

“Yes.  I know.  It seems all wrong.”

“It is wrong.  It’s a mistake,” said the doctor slowly.

“Whose mistake?” she asked quickly.

“Ah, there you have me, Marcella.  It was to answer questions like that that men invented the devil, I believe; they like to say he put the grit in the machine that turned out Wullie, and made him like that out of perversity.”

“But what do you say?” she said, looking into his face.

“I don’t know.  I think several things.  For one thing, I like to imagine that God, or Nature, whichever you like to call it—­isn’t a perfect machine yet, and that we human beings can step in to help a bit.”

“But how?”

“Wullie’s father, I’ve heard, was drowned before he was born, and his mother was too proud to tell when she was hungry.  She used to go out every night and take his place with the fishing boats, rowing, sitting cramped, drawing the nets.  We can help there by stopping that sort of thing.”

Marcella watched him, wide-eyed.  She was completely mystified but so full of questions that she could not find which one to ask first.

“That’s what I’d have said when I was at the hospital, a young man.  In those days I dealt much more with cells and bodies than—­than I do now.  Queer thing, Marcella—­youngsters go for physiology mostly.  When they get older they see that there’s more in psychology.  I’m old now.  Maybe I’m more foolish, but I’ve a feeling, right down at my marrow, that I’m wiser.  I like to think that Wullie’s an example of the law of compensation and, by losing physical strength and beauty, has gained a beautiful soul.  But for the Lord’s sake don’t go telling anyone I—­a doctor—­talked such arrant nonsense,” he added with a laugh as he puffed at his pipe.