"I--why, I--just--" she hesitated, "why, I don't know what _is_ the
matter with me." She brought it out with the most honest surprise in the
world.

Dr. Melton's approval of this answer was immense. "Why, Lydia, I'm proud
of you! You're one in a thousand. You'll break the hearts of everyone
who knows you by turning out a sensible woman if you don't look out. I
don't believe there's another girl in Endbury who would have had the
nerve to tell the truth and not fake up a headache, or a broken heart,
or _Weltschmerz_, or some such trifle, for a reason." He pulled himself
up to his feet. "Of course, you don't know what's the matter with you,
my dear. _I_ do. _I_ know everything, and can't do a thing. That's me!
Physically, you're upset by Endbury heat after an ocean voyage, and
mentally it's the reaction caused by your subsidence into private life
after being the central figure of the returned traveler. Last evening,
now, with that mob of friends and the family pawing at you and trying to
cram-jam you back into the Endbury box and shut the lid down--_that_ was
enough to kill anybody with a nerve in her body. What's the history of
the morning? I hope you slept late."

Lydia shook her head. "No; I was up ever so early.--Marietta came over
to borrow the frames for drying curtains, and stayed to breakfast."

Something about her accent struck oddly on the trained sensitiveness of
the physician's ear. Her tone rang empty, as with something kept back.

"Marietta's been snapping at you," he diagnosed rapidly.

"Well, a little," Lydia admitted.

The doctor laid the palm-leaf fan aside and took Lydia's slim fingers in
both his firm, sinewy hands. "My dear, I'm going to do as I have always
done with you, and talk with you as though you were a grown-up person
and could take your share in understanding and bearing family problems.
Your sister Marietta is not a very happy woman. She has too many of your
father's brains for the life she's been shunted into. She might be
damming up a big river with a finely constructed concrete dam, and what
she is giving all her strength to is trying to hold back a muddy little
trickle with her bare hands. The achievement of her life is to give on a
two-thousand-a-year income the appearance of having five thousand like
your father. She does it; she's a remarkably forceful woman, but it
frets her. She ought to be in better business, and she knows it, though
she won't admit it. So, don't you mind if