“Ready?” she asked, smiling.  “Or, rather, as ready as you ever will be?”

“Does my reluctance show as plainly as that?  But I am quite ready now to do your bidding.”

“Sit down in that chair, please.  But first—­I really can’t wait longer to ask you—­how is Jamie Ferguson?”

“Doing finely.”  His face lighted with pleasure at the thought.

“Will he have the full use of his poor little legs?”

“It is too soon to say positively.  We hope quite confidently for that result.  He shows better powers of recuperation than we dared expect.”

“Yesterday,” said Charlotte, her hand on a certain bulb out of sight, “Miss Mathewson told me something Jamie had said.  It was the most extraordinary thing—­”

She related the incident, in which the lad had shyly praised both Leaver and Burns as seeming to him like big brothers.  She told it with animation, her watchful eyes on her sitter’s face.  At a certain point, just before the climax of the story, she gave the bulb a long, slow pressure; then, ending, she remarked: 

“Now, if you are ready, Dr. Leaver.”

His face immediately grew grave, lost its expression of interested attention, and set in lines of resignation.  She went through a number of motions and announced that the sitting was over.

“It wasn’t so bad, was it?” she questioned, gayly, as she removed the plate she had used.  “I’m not even going to try again.  I’ve discovered that it’s not always best to repeat an attempt, and when you are pretty sure you have what you want, it doesn’t pay.”

“Thank you for making the operation so nearly painless.  I haven’t had a photograph taken since I was a medical student, and I wasn’t prepared for so short a trial.  But, even so, I felt the desperateness of the situation.  Doubtless that will show plainly in the final result.”

“Mine is a discreet camera, and doesn’t tell all it sees, so it is possible it may keep your reluctance disguised.”

She took away the plate, left him for a few minutes alone among the photographs, and returned.

“It is quite all right, I think, Dr. Leaver,” she said, “and the agony is over.  You are leaving town to-day?”

He rose.  “I go to-night.  I should have come to say good-bye, in any case, but, as I go out to Sunny Farm for one more look at the boy, I must be off.  So—­I’ll make this the good-bye.”

“I hope you’ll have the busiest, happiest sort of winter,” she said, in the charming, friendly way which was naturally her own.  “So busy and so happy you’ll forget this long, trying time of waiting to be well.  Surely, the rest—­and Dr. Burns—­have done the work.  When you see the portrait I hope it will show you, better than looking at yourself in any mirror, what good has been done.”

“Thank you.  I know a great change has been wrought, somehow, thanks to a man who insisted on having his own way when I didn’t want to let him.  You expect to stay in this cottage all winter?”