“Martha has plenty more,” said the doctor, bluntly.  “Boarding-house?  Well, supposing?  What was it before?  A hyena-cage, Martha, a hyena-cage, into which you’d be the last to venture your nose, my dear woman!  I say, put on your bonnets, all of you, and let’s have a spin in the fresh air.  The roads are gorgeous.  You can come too, Jelnik:  there’s room for five.”

Mr. Jelnik was desolated:  he had a pressing engagement.  Miss Hopkins rose precipitately.  She also had an engagement; besides, she liked to walk.  People needed to walk more than they did.  The reason why one saw so many bad figures nowadays, was that people lolled around in automobiles instead of walking.

“Well, walking is certainly good for you, Martha.  It helps you to reduce,” the doctor agreed.  Miss Hopkins said dryly that the little walking she intended to do just then wouldn’t affect her weight any.  And that Doctor Geddes should himself take to walking:  men always got fat as they neared fifty.

“Fat!  Fifty!” roared the doctor, with enraged astonishment.  “Why, I’m not by some years as old as you are, Martha!  You were several classes ahead of me in school, don’t you remember?  I am exactly thirty-nine years old, and as you know everything else, you ought to know that!”

Miss Hopkins studied him with a balefully level eye.

“You really can’t blame anybody for forgetting it, Richard,” she said, ambiguously.

“You are to recollect, Geddes, that a woman is always as young as she looks,” (Mr. Jelnik bowed, smilingly, to Miss Hopkins), “and a man is older than he feels,” he added, for the doctor’s benefit.

“All right.  Let’s say I feel as good as Martha looks,” the doctor’s momentary ill humor vanished.  Miss Hopkins smiled.  She had stuck her claws into him and drawn blood; but her fur was still ruffled.

Mr. Jelnik made his adieus, Boris offering each of us a polite paw.

“And now,” the doctor ordered briskly, “to your spinning, jades, to your spinning!  Into my car, the three of you!  No, Martha, I will not take a refusal; you shall not walk:  you’ve got to come along, if I have to tuck you under my arm.  I don’t care if you never reduce.  What do you want to reduce for, anyhow?  You’re all right just as you are!  There! are you satisfied?”

We stood by passively while the masterful doctor heckled and hustled the unhappy Center of Culture into his car.  With heaven knows what feelings, she found herself seated beside me, Sophy Smith, while Alicia, beside the doctor, tossed gay remarks over her shoulder.  Miss Hopkins realized that all Hyndsville would witness what she herself knew to be high-handed capture by force, but which must hideously resemble capitulation; and she also realized that explanations never explain.