"Mine."
Her response as she bustled away, "Has every one gone mad!" set them all smiling, and Carter's remark, "A bit too long in the oven," eloquently described her crustiness.
But if long study of people from interior views had left the matron purblind as to outward signs, sympathies, and emotions, she was not so short-sighted but that she came to a full stop at the sight of Carruthers, who stood, hands clinched, like a naughty boy, face to the wall.
"You poor man!" But though her tone was gentle as her touch on his shoulder, he threw her hand fiercely away and strode off uttering an unmistakable "damn."
"Another lunatic!" she tartly commented, and was confirmed in that flattering opinion when, instead of pining in romantic fashion, he fell in love again and married a sweet girl the following summer.
Left thus alone in the case, the head doctor nodded his satisfaction at the patient's decided improvement, while his further instructions were short as pleasant—"Same treatment, continued at intervals."
These orders, be sure, were faithfully observed. Indeed, he had scarcely passed out than—but the next hour is their's, intrusion would be impertinent. Sufficient that its confidences left each possessed of the other's every thought and feeling throughout their separation.
Her eyes dancing, she broke a happy silence to say: "You were dreadfully transparent. Did you really think I couldn't see through your misbehavior?" Then she told of how Dorothy had confided to her his appeal to Hart and efforts at self-improvement. "But," she added, with a sigh that was almost plaintive, "I wouldn't have cared."
Also she told him of her proud espionage upon him at the general manager's dinner; in return for which she learned how he had waited at the forks of his own trail that winter's night—waited while his ponies shivered in the bitter wind until he picked hers and Elinor Leslie's voices from the groan of passing runners.
She remembered. "Oh, was that you? Why didn't you come in?"