"Yes, I must go," said the Professor, getting up. "Is it raining yet? I slipped off between showers without an umbrella."
"Sorry I haven't one," Milford replied. "Yes, it's raining. Take that coat up there. It may protect you some."
"Thank you. I shall avail myself of your offer."
He put on the coat, bade them good-night, and set out for home. The road was muddy and he walked close to the fence. Once he strode into a patch of briars. "The waste land of my years of study," he said. He shied when he saw the light in his window, and he cleared his throat and braced himself. His wife and Miss Catherine, hearing him upon the veranda, sat down upon the floor, as if they had no chairs. He stepped in, looked at them, and sadly shook his head.
"I would be polite enough to choose a finer insinuation," said he. "There may be virtue in a hint—there may be all sorts of spice in it, but there's nothing but insult in squatting around on the floor like this. I don't know how to choose words for the occasion. I will simply bid you good-night."
He heard them talking after he went to bed. He sighed out his distemper and fell asleep. In the morning he found that he had hung Milford's coat upside down. A paper had fallen from the pocket. He took it up, opened it, and with a start he recognized his medical treatise.
CHAPTER XXI.
FROM HER.
Early the next morning Milford was leading a horse out of the barn when he met the Professor at the door. For a moment the scholar stood puffing the short breath of his haste; he had not picked his way, for his clothes were bespattered with mud, as if in his eagerness he had split the middle of the road.