When Mrs. Day, his housekeeper, put her head into his room, exclaiming that the breakfast-bell had rung half an hour ago, he followed her to the dining-room and swallowed his cold coffee without a word, with a meekness that touched the heart of his Gorgon. She proposed boiling him an egg, or cutting a few shavings of ham; but the doctor declined her attentions (to her great relief) and hurried to the stable for Rosanna. He drove twenty miles away to his most distant patient, whom he alarmed by his gloomy face and abrupt manner; he drove Rosanna back to Sealing at a rate she was unaccustomed to, and walking up the street—it was then late in the afternoon—encountered Tommy McNally, roaring at the top of his voice, and rubbing his eyes as if he wished to leave in them no powers of vision. Dr. James stopped and asked rather crossly what ailed him:
"O doctor! she's gone away, and she's given me this," holding up a dollar bill and continuing to cry, "and one for each of us; and she's gone away, and we won't see her any more!"
"Do you mean Miss Lester?"
"Yes, doctor," said Tommy, beginning to dry his eyes. "I've been to the station and seen her go off; and she told me to be a good boy and help mother."
"Mind you do it," said the doctor, hurrying away and home to his cold dinner. That evening he called on Father Barry, and heard that Margaret had been there on her way to the cars, and had left directions for all her protégés, especially the McNallys. Father Barry seemed quite dejected about her departure, and much surprised at it; but the doctor, of course, chose to throw no light on the subject.
CHAPTER XVIII.
"THE HEARTBREAK OF TO-MORROW."
A few days after, as soon as Dr. James could make up his mind to do so, he called on Miss Spelman, and found the house quite as forlorn as he had expected, and his old friend very glad to receive sympathy. She said she had heard from her niece that very day.
"It was an amusing, affectionate letter," said Miss Selina, "just like her. Poor child! she will be easy now she is with her friend. She was very much changed, doctor."
"What do you mean?"
"Why, she had grown so quiet and so strange—that is, she seemed to me strange; she would sit so long without speaking a word; and then she was much more affectionate—I mean more demonstrative—than when she first came; but she seemed to have lost her good spirits."