“You say it’s ketching?”

“I said it might be.  We have not yet entirely formed our diagnosis.”

The woman stared yet again.  Then she turned about with a switch which disclosed fringy black petticoats and white stockings.  “Well, form your noses all you want to,” said she.  “You have took away my boarder, an’ if he gits well, and it ain’t ketchin’, I’ll have the law on ye.”

Gordon drew a deep breath when the door closed behind her.  “It seems sometimes to me as if comedy were the haircloth shirt of tragedy,” he said grimly.  “Well, Elliot, we will go upstairs and begin the fight.  I am going to fight to the death.  I shall remain here to-night.  You will have to look after my other patients when you leave here.  I am sorry to put so much upon you.”

“Oh, that’s all right,” said James, following Gordon upstairs.  But as he spoke he wondered more and more that this man, after what he had known of him, should be of more importance to Gordon than all others.

Even during the short time they had been downstairs the angry red around the abrasion on the cheek had widened, and widened toward the head.  Gordon opened his medicine-case and took out a bottle and hairbrush and commenced work.  Directly the entire cheek was blackened with the application of iron.  Georgie K. had brought glasses, and medicine had been forced into the patient’s mouth.  “Now go and have some eggnog mixed, Georgie K.,” said Gordon, “and bring it here yourself, if you will.  I hate to trouble you.”

“That’s all right, Doc,” said Georgie K., and went.

James remained only a short time, since he had the other calls to make.  He returned quite late to find that dinner had been kept waiting for him, and Clemency in her pretty red gown was watching.  Mrs. Ewing had not come down all day.  “Mother says she is easier,” Clemency observed, “only she thinks it better to keep perfectly still.”  Clemency said very little about the man at the hotel.  She seemed to dread the very mention of him.  She and James spent a long evening together, and she was entirely charming.  James began to put behind him all the mystery and dark hints of evil.  Clemency, although fond, was as elusive as a butterfly.  She had feminine wiles to her finger tips, but she was quite innocent of the fact that they were wiles.  It took the whole evening for the young man to secure a kiss or two, and have her upon his knee for the space of about five minutes.  She nestled closely to him with a little sigh of happiness for a very little while, then she slipped away, and stood looking at him like an elf.  “I am not going to do that much,” said she.

“Why not, darling?”

“Because I am not.  It is silly.  I love you, but I will not be silly.  I want only what will last.  The love will last, but the silliness won’t.  We are going to be married, but I shall not want to sit on your knee all the time, and what is more, you will not want me to.  Suppose we should live to be very old.  Who ever saw a very old woman sitting on her very old husband’s knee?  The love will last, but that will not.  We will not have so very much of that which will not last.”