extremely careful and saving.  Zenas says a tramp stopped at her door once and asked for food.  Miss Cousins—­there, I didn’t mean to give her name!  But no matter—­Miss Cousins brought him a slice of stale bread thinly spread with butter.  Zenas says the tramp looked from the bread to Miss Cousins, who, I should explain is extremely thin in face and figure, and back to the bread.  Then he held it out to her.  ‘Lady,’ he said, ’I haven’t the heart to take this from you.  You need it more than I do.  Eat it yourself!’”

Under cover of Wade’s appreciative laughter the Doctor made his adieux, promising to call again at half-past seven.  Wade watched him depart down the street, very erect and a trifle pompous, his gold-headed stick serving no other purpose than that of ornament.  Then he went indoors and walked to the mirror.

“Gee!” he muttered, “I wish my trunk were here!”

VIII.

The parlor at The Cedars was very different from that in the Craig cottage.  It was pretty and comfortable, with lamps that diffused a cheerful, mellow glow over the lower half of the room and left the upper in pleasantly mysterious gloom.  There was much old-fashioned furniture—­such as the spindle-legged card table at which Miss Mullett and the Doctor were deeply absorbed in cribbage—­but enough comfortable modern chairs had been provided to render martyrdom unnecessary.  The four windows were hung with bright creton and muslin, and the dull-green carpet neither stared one out of countenance nor made one fearful to set foot upon it.  It was a jolly, chummy sort of carpet that seemed to say, “Walk on me all you want to, and don’t be afraid to spill your crumbs; I like crumbs.”  A very large tortoise-shell cat lay stretched along the arm of the couch, half asleep, and purred as Eve dipped her fingers in the long fur.  The windows on the side of the room were open and the draperies swayed gently with the little breeze.  Wade, seated at the other end of the couch from his hostess, was feeling happy and inexplicably elated.

“I feel quite guilty about this morning,” Eve was saying.  “I’m afraid I wasn’t very polite.  Did I—­did I smile?”

“If you didn’t, you were a saint,” answered Wade.  “It’s a wonder to me you didn’t howl!”

“It was funny, though, wasn’t it?  Now that it’s all over, I mean; now that I’ve apologized and Carrie has apologized for me and you’ve apologized.  You did look so—­so utterly dumfounded!”

“I was!” replied Wade grimly.  “For a moment I thought I’d had a sunstroke or something and was out of my head.  At first, when I came in and saw you standing there, I thought—­it was a foolish thing to think, of course—­but I thought you had come to call on me!”

“Again?”

“Again?  I’m afraid I don’t—­”

“Now let’s be honest, Mr. Herrick.  You did see me the—­the first time, didn’t you?”

“Just as you wish,” laughed Wade.  “I did or I didn’t.”