"I'll court my Sweetheart when and where I choose!" the Young Doctor answered defiantly, and left the house.
The night seemed a thousand miles long to him, but when he slept at last and woke again, the air was fresh and hopeful with a new day. He dressed quickly and hurried off to the scene of last night's tragedy, where he found the Old Housekeeper arguing in the doorway with a small boy. She turned to the Doctor complacently. "He's begging for the postage stamp off the Japanese letter," she exclaimed, "and I'm just telling him I sent it to my Sister's boy in Montreal."
There was no slightest trace of self-consciousness in her manner, and the Young Doctor could not help but smile as he beckoned her into the house and shut the door.
Then, "Have you told her?" he asked eagerly.
The Old Housekeeper humped her shoulders against the door and folded her arms sumptuously. "No, I haven't told her," she said, "and I'm not going to. I don't dar'st! I help you out about your business same as I helped the Old Doctor out about his business. That's all right. That's as it should be. And I'll go skipping up those stairs to tell the little lady any highfaluting, pleasant yarn that you can invent, but I don't budge one single step to tell that poor, innocent, loony Lamb—the truth. It isn't ugliness, Doctor. I haven't got the strength, that's all!"
Just then the little silver bell tinkled, and the Doctor went heavily up the few steps that swung the Sick-A-Bed Lady's room just out of line of real upstairs or downstairs.
The Sick-A-Bed Lady was lying in glorious state, arrayed in a wonderful pale green kimono with shimmering silver birds on it.
"You stayed too long downstairs," she asserted and went on trying to cut out pictures from a magazine.
The Young Doctor stood at the window looking out to sea as long as his legs would hold him, and then he came back and sat down on the edge of the bed.
"What's your name, Honey?" he asked with a forced smile.