downstairs the angry red around
the abrasion on the cheek had widened, and widened toward the head.
Gordon opened his medicine-case and took out a bottle and hairbrush and
commenced work. Directly the entire cheek was blackened with the
application of iron. Georgie K. had brought glasses, and medicine had
been forced into the patient's mouth. "Now go and have some eggnog
mixed, Georgie K.," said Gordon, "and bring it here yourself, if you
will. I hate to trouble you."

"That's all right, Doc," said Georgie K., and went.

James remained only a short time, since he had the other calls to make.
He returned quite late to find that dinner had been kept waiting for
him, and Clemency in her pretty red gown was watching. Mrs. Ewing had
not come down all day. "Mother says she is easier," Clemency observed,
"only she thinks it better to keep perfectly still." Clemency said very
little about the man at the hotel. She seemed to dread the very mention
of him. She and James spent a long evening together, and she was
entirely charming. James began to put behind him all the mystery and
dark hints of evil. Clemency, although fond, was as elusive as a
butterfly. She had feminine wiles to her finger tips, but she was quite
innocent of the fact that they were wiles. It took the whole evening for
the young man to secure a kiss or two, and have her upon his knee for
the space of about five minutes. She nestled closely to him with a
little sigh of happiness for a very little while, then she slipped away,
and stood looking at him like an elf. "I am not going to do that much,"
said she.

"Why not, darling?"

"Because I am not. It is silly. I love you, but I will not be silly. I
want only what will last. The love will last, but the silliness won't.
We are going to be married, but I shall not want to sit on your knee all
the time, and what is more, you will not want me to. Suppose we should
live to be very old. Who ever saw a very old woman sitting on her very
old husband's knee? The love will last, but that will not. We will not
have so very much of that which will not last."

For all that, James caught Clemency and kissed her until her soft face
was crimson, but he said to himself, when he was in his own room, that
never was a girl so wise, and how much more he wanted to hold her upon
his knee--as if he had not already held her there--and yet she was not
coquettish. She was simply earnest, with an odd, wise, childlike
earnestness.

Ear