“Mebbe,” she answered, grudgingly.  “No more’n a mite, though.”

“That’s all we can expect so soon.  By to-morrow morning, though, you should be all right.”  His manner unconsciously indicated that it would be the one joy of a hitherto desolate existence if Miss Mattie should be perfectly well again in the morning.

“How’s my fellow sufferer?” she inquired, somewhat mollified.

“Barbara?  She’s doing very well.  She’s a brave little thing.”

“Which is the sickest—­her or me?”

“As regards actual pain,” replied Doctor Conrad, tactfully, “you are probably suffering more than she is at the present moment.”

“I knowed it,” cried Miss Mattie triumphantly.  “Do you hear that, Roger?”

But Roger had slipped out, remembering that “woman suffrage” was not a proper subject for discussion in his hearing.

[Sidenote:  Wanderin’ Fits]

“I reckon he’s gone over to North’s,” grumbled Miss Mattie.  “When my eye ain’t on him, he scoots off.  His pa was the same way.  He was forever chasin’ over there and Roger’s inherited it from him.  Whenever I’ve wanted either of ’em, they’ve always been took with wanderin’ fits.”

“You sent him out before,” Allan reminded her.

“So I did, but I ain’t sent him out now and he’s gone just the same.  That’s the trouble.  After you once get an idea into a man’s head, it stays put.  You can’t never get it out again.  And ideas that other people puts in is just the same.”

“Women change their minds more easily, don’t they?” asked Allan.  He was enjoying himself very much.

“Of course.  There’s nothin’ set about a woman unless she’s got a busted back.  She ain’t carin’ to move around much then.  The postmaster’s wife was tellin’ me about one of the women at the hotel—­the one that’s writin’ the book.  Do you know her?”

“I’ve probably seen her.”

[Sidenote:  All a Mistake]

“The postmaster’s wife’s bunion was a hurtin’ her awful one day when this woman come in after stamps, and she told her to go and help herself and put the money in the drawer.  So she did, and while she was doin’ it she told the postmaster’s wife that she didn’t have no bunion and no pain—­that it was all a mistake.”

“‘You wouldn’t think so,’ says the postmaster’s wife, ’if it was your foot that had the mistake on it.’  She was awful mad at first, but, after she got calmed down, the book-woman told her what she meant.”

“‘There ain’t no pain nor disease in the world,’ she says.  ’It’s all imagination.’

“‘Well,’ says the postmaster’s wife, ‘when the swellin’ is so bad, how’m I to undeceive myself?’

“The book-woman says:  ’Just deny it, and affirm the existence of good.  You just set down and say to yourself:  “I can’t have no bunion cause there ain’t no such thing, and it can’t hurt me because there is no such thing as pain.  My foot is perfectly well and strong.  I will get right up and walk."’