"Evenin', Brother Spencer. How air ye?"
"Tol'able, thank ye, Sally." The body-and-soul mender studied the girl awhile in silence, and then said bluntly:
"Ye've done broke right smart, in the last year. Anything the matter with ye?"
She shook her head, and laughed. It was an effort to laugh merrily, but only the ghost of the old instinctive blitheness rippled into it.
"I've jest come from old Spicer South's," volunteered the doctor.
"He's ailin' pretty consid'able, these days."
"What's the matter with Unc' Spicer?" demanded the girl, in genuine anxiety. Every one along Misery called the old man Unc' Spicer.
"I can't jest make out." Her informer spoke slowly, and his brow corrugated into something like sullenness. "He hain't jest to say sick. Thet is, his organs seems all right, but he don't 'pear to have no heart fer nothin', and his victuals don't tempt him none. He's jest puny, thet's all."
"I'll go over thar, an' see him," announced the girl. "I'll cook a chicken thet'll tempt him."
The physician's mind was working along some line which did not seem to partake of cheerfulness. Again, he studied the girl, still upright and high-chinned, but, somehow, no longer effervescent with wild, resilient strength.
"Hit sometimes 'pears to me," he said, gruffly, "thet this here thing of eddication costs a sight more than hit comes to."