I sat up and stared at him.  I could hardly see out of my eyes.  He had his back to the light, but I could tell that he had a cross of adhesive plaster on his cheek and that one eye was almost shut.  He smiled when he saw my expression.

“It’s the temperament,” he said.  “It goes with the hair.  I’ve got it too, only I’m apt to go out and pick a fight at such times, and a woman hasn’t got that outlet.  As you see, I found Mike, and my disfigurement is to Mike’s as starlight to the noonday glare.  Come and take a walk.”

I shook my head, but he took my arm and pulled me off the bed.

“You come for a walk!” he said.  “I’ll wait in the hall until you powder your nose.  You look like a fire that’s been put out by a rain-storm.”

I didn’t want to go, but anything was better than sitting in the room moping.  I put on my jacket and Miss Patty’s chinchillas, which cheered me a little, but as we went downstairs the quiet of the place sat on my chest like a weight.

The lower hall was empty.  A new card headed “Rules” hung on the door into the private office, but I did not read it.  What was the use of rules without people to disobey them?  Mrs. Moody had forgotten her crocheting bag and it hung on the back of a chair.  I had to bite my lip to keep it from trembling again.

“The Jenningses are still here,” said the doctor.  “The old man is madder than any hornet ever dared be, and they go in the morning.  But the situation was too much for our German friend.  He left with the others.”

Well, we went out and I took the path I knew best, which was out toward the spring-house.  There wasn’t a soul in sight.  The place looked lonely, with the trees hung with snow, and arching over the board walk.  At the little bridge over the creek Doctor Barnes stopped, and leaning over the rail, took a good look at me.

“When you self-contained women go to pieces,” he said, “you pretty near smash, don’t you?  You look as if you’d had a death in your family.”

“This was my family,” I half sniveled.

“But,” he said, “you’ll be getting married and having a home of your own and forgetting all about this.”

He looked at me with his sharp eyes.  “There’s probably some nice chap in the village, eh?”

I shook my head.  I had just caught sight of the broken pieces of the Moody water-pitcher on the ice below.

“No nice young man!” he remarked.  “Not the telegraph operator, or the fellow who runs the livery-stable—­I’ve forgotten his name.”

“Look here,” I turned on him, “if you’re talking all this nonsense to keep my mind off things, you needn’t.”

“I’m not,” he said.  “I’m asking for the sake of my own mind, but we’ll not bother about that now.  We’d better start back.”

It was still snowing, although not so hard.  The air had done me some good, but the lump in my throat seemed to have gone to my chest.  The doctor helped me along, for the snow was drifting, and when he saw I was past the crying stage he went back to what we were both thinking about.