“What Helena needs is—­a jolt!” said Madison to himself.  “I guess her trouble is one of those everlasting feminine kinks that all women since Adam’s wife have patted themselves on the back over, because they think it’s a dark veil of mystery that is beyond the acumen of brute man to understand.  That’s what the novelists write pages about—­wade right in up to the armpits in it—­feminine psychology—­great!  And the women smile commiseratingly at the novelist—­the idea of a man even pretending to understand them—­kind of a blooming merry-go-round and everybody happy!  Feminine psychology!  I guess a little masculine kick-up is about the right dope!  What the deuce have I been standing for it for?  I don’t have to—­I don’t have to go around making sheep’s-eyes at her—­what?  She wants grabbing up and being rushed right off her feet a la Roost, and—­hello, Mr. Marvin, how are you to-day!”—­he had halted beside a middle-aged man who was sitting on the grass at the roadside.

“Better, Mr. Madison, better,” returned the man, heartily.  “Really very much better.”

“Fine!” said Madison.

“We all saw the Patriarch to-day—­God bless him!” said Marvin.  “We’ve been waiting out there two days, you know—­that woman with the bad back got up off her stretcher.”

“Splendid!” exclaimed Madison enthusiastically.  “And the glorious thing about it is that there’s no reason why everybody can’t be cured if they’ll only come here in the right spirit.”

“That’s so!” agreed Marvin.  “None are so blind as those who won’t see—­they’re in utter blackness compared with the physical blindness of that grand and marvelous man.  I’m going home myself in another week—­better than ever I was in my life.  It was stomach with me, you know—­doctors said there wasn’t any chance except to operate, and that an operation was too slim a chance to be worth risking it.”  He got up and laughed, carefree, joyous.  “God-given place down here, isn’t it?  Clean—­that’s it.  Clean air, clean-souled people, clean everything you see or do or hear.  Say, it kind of opens your eyes to real living, doesn’t it—­it’s the luxuries and the worries and the pace and the damn-fooleries that kill.  Well, I’m going along back now to get some of Mrs. Perkins’ cream—­clean, rich cream—­and homemade bread and butter—­imagine me with an appetite and able to eat!”

He laughed again—­and Madison joined him in the laugh, slapping him a cordial good-by on the shoulder.

Madison started on once more—­but now his progress was slow, frequently interrupted, for he stopped a score of times to chat and exchange a few words with those whom he passed on the road.  There were cheery faces everywhere—­even those of the sufferers who straggled out along the road coming back from the Patriarch’s cottage.  It was a cheery afternoon, warm and balmy and bright—­everything was cheery.  The farmers, their vocations for the moment changed, waved their whips at him and shouted friendly pleasantries as they drove by with those who were unable to make the trip from the Patriarch’s unaided.