Georgie K. turned upon him.  “What on earth did you do it for, Doc?” said he.

“Because I felt the way you have felt yourself.”

“When?”

“When the woman that made those wax-flowers, and loved that little stuffed bird in there, died.”

Georgie K.’s face paled.  “What’s the matter, Doc?”

“Nothing, I tell you.”

“What?”

“Nothing.  Who said there was anything?  I had to have my little joke.  I tell you, Georgie K., I’ve got to have my little joke, just as I’ve got to have my game of euchre with you and my glass of apple-jack; a man can’t be driven too far.  I meant to make it right with him.  He’s a mean little cuss, but I am not mean.  I intended to spend a hundred on my joke, and you got ahead of me.  For God’s sake, take the money, Georgie K.”

Georgie K., still with a white, shocked, inquiring face, extended his hand and took the roll of bills which the doctor gave him.

“Come in and take something,” said he, and Doctor Gordon and James accepted.  They went again into the state parlor on whose shelf were the wax-flowers and the stuffed canary, and they partook of apple-jack.

Then Doctor Gordon and James took leave.  Georgie K. gave Gordon a hearty shake of the hand when he got into the buggy.  Gordon looked at James again with his gloomy face, as he took up the lines.  “Failed in the race again,” he said.  “Now we’ve got to hustle, for I have eight calls to make before dinner, and it’s late.  I ought to change horses, but there isn’t time.”

CHAPTER IV

The weeks went on, and James led the same life with practically no variation.  The sense of a mystery or mysteries about the house never left him, and it irritated him.  He was not curious; he did not in the least care to know in what the mystery consisted, but the fact of concealment itself was obnoxious to him.  As for himself, he never concealed anything, and when it came to mystery, he had a vague idea of something shameful, if not criminal.  Doctor Gordon’s incomprehensible changes of mood, of almost more than mood, of character even, disturbed him.  Why a man should be one hour a country buffoon, the next an absorbed gentleman, he could not understand.  And he could not understand also why Clemency had never left the house since he had met her on the day of his arrival.  She evidently was herself angry and sulky at being housed, but she did not attempt to resist, and whenever Mrs. Ewing expressed anxiety about her health, she laughed it off, and made some excuse, such as the badness of the roads, or some Christmas work which she was anxious to finish.  However, at last Mrs. Ewing’s concern grew so evident that Doctor Gordon at dinner one day gave what seemed a plausible reason for Clemency remaining indoors.  “If you will have it, Clara,” he said, “Clemency has a slight pain in her side, and pleurisy and pneumonia are all about, and I told her that she had better take no chances, and the weather has been raw.”