“Like what?  He isn’t mean!”

“To make you stay in all day.”

“He didn’t.  Not him!  He gave me fifty cents and told me to take a day off.  ‘Just run around with the medicine, Bubble,’ says he, ’and then you can hike it.  I have a feeling in my bones,’ he says, ’that nobody’s going to die to-day.’”

“Well, then—­”

“A man has a sense of duty for all that.”

“Well,” rising with a dejected air, “if you’re not coming, good-bye.  It will be lovely paddling!  Aunt’s given me some lettuce sandwiches and two apple turnovers.  One was for you, but I suppose I can eat them both.  The sugar’s leaked all round the edge—­lovely!”

The stern disciple of business watched her tie on her sun-bonnet with mingled feelings.  It began to look as if she was really going!

“Good-bye,” said Ann.

Bubble’s red face grew a shade redder.

“Just like a girl!” he said bitterly.  “Because a man’s got to deliver two medicine bottles, off she goes and won’t wait for him.  And the farthest I’ve got to go is over to Mrs. Nixon’s.  The whole thing won’t take five minutes.”

Sun-bonnets are splendid things for hiding the face!  Had Bubble seen that slow smile of victory there is no telling what might have happened.  But he did not see it.  And Ann was too good a general to exult openly.  Her answer was carefully careless.  “I’ll wait—­if you’ll hurry up!”

But the look which she threw after his hastily retreating figure was as old as Eve.

Meanwhile the doctor and Esther, who had been so criminally careless of professional appearances as to drive down Main Street with a picnic basket protruding, were enjoying themselves with an enjoyment peculiar to careless people.  Esther had forgotten about the pile of uncorrected school exercises which were supposed to form her Saturday’s work; the doctor had forgotten about the measles and the twins.  Rain had fallen in the night and the dust was laid, the trees were intensely green.

Neither of them knew exactly how this pleasant thing had come about, although, as a matter of crude fact, Mrs. Sykes had played the part of the god from the machine.  This energetic lady had made the doctor’s professional career her peculiar care and it had occurred to her that, as a resident physician, he was disgracefully ignorant of the surrounding country.  At the same moment she had remembered that to-morrow was Saturday, and that for trapesing the country and meandering around in outlandish places there was no one in town equal to Esther Coombe.

“But,” objected the doctor, “I hardly know Miss Coombe well enough to ask a favour of her.”

Mrs. Sykes opined that that didn’t matter.  “Land sakes,” she declared, “it would be a nice state of affairs if one huming-being couldn’t do a kindness to another without being acquainted a year or two.”  Besides, Esther, as the old doctor’s daughter, might almost be said to have a duty toward the newcomer.  Mrs. Sykes felt sure that Dr. Coombe would have insisted upon proper attentions being shown, since he was always “the politest man you ever saw, and terrible nice to strangers.”