“Why, yes,” he answered, smiling.

“And not ask me why?”

“Certainly.”

“Thank you.  Yes,” she added hastily, “she is so much worse that some one of greater experience than I must see her, and I have made up my mind.  Dr. Mulbridge may refuse to consult with me.  I know very well that there is a prejudice against women physicians, and I couldn’t especially blame him for sharing it.  I have thought it all over.  If he refuses, I shall know what to do.”  She had ceased to address Libby, who respected her soliloquy.  He drove on rapidly over the soft road, where the wheels made no sound, and the track wandered with apparent aimlessness through the interminable woods of young oak and pine.  The low trees were full of the sunshine, and dappled them with shadow as they dashed along; the fresh, green ferns springing from the brown carpet of the pine-needles were as if painted against it.  The breath of the pines was heavier for the recent rain; and the woody smell of the oaks was pungent where the balsam failed.  They met no one, but the solitude did not make itself felt through her preoccupation.  From time to time she dropped a word or two; but for the most she was silent, and he did not attempt to lead.  By and by they came to an opener place, where there were many red field-lilies tilting in the wind.

“Would you like some of those?” he asked, pulling up.

“I should, very much,” she answered, glad of the sight of the gay things.  But when he had gathered her a bunch of the flowers she looked down at them in her lap, and said, “It’s silly in me to be caring for lilies at such a time, and I should make an unfavorable impression on Dr. Mulbridge if he saw me with them.  But I shall risk their effect on him.  He may think I have been botanizing.”

“Unless you tell him you have n’t,” the young man suggested.

“I need n’t do that.”

“I don’t think any one else would do it.”

She colored a little at the tribute to her candor, and it pleased her, though it had just pleased her as much to forget that she was not like any other young girl who might be simply and irresponsibly happy in flowers gathered for her by a young man.  “I won’t tell him, either!” she cried, willing to grasp the fleeting emotion again; but it was gone, and only a little residue of sad consciousness remained.

The woods gave way on either side of the road, which began to be a village street, sloping and shelving down toward the curve of a quiet bay.  The neat weather-gray dwellings, shingled to the ground and brightened with door-yard flowers and creepers, straggled off into the boat-houses and fishing-huts on the shore, and the village seemed to get afloat at last in the sloops and schooners riding in the harbor, whose smooth plane rose higher to the eye than the town itself.  The salt and the sand were everywhere, but though there had been no positive prosperity in Corbitant for a generation, the place had an impregnable neatness, which defied decay; if there had been a dog in the street, there would not have been a stick to throw at him.