“Clemency is treating you shamefully,” Gordon said.

“A girl has a right to her own mind in such a matter, if she has in anything.”

“The worst of it is, it is not her mind.  I tell you I know that.”

“I am not so sure.”

“Wait and see!  You underestimate yourself, boy.”

James laughed sadly.  Then there was a knock on the office door and Georgie K. appeared.  He looked shyly at Gordon.  He had a bottle under his arm.  “I have brought over a little apple-jack; thought it might do you good,” he stammered, his great face suffused like a girl’s.

Gordon looked affectionately at him.  “Thank you, Georgie K.,” he said.  “Sit down and we will have a game.  I’ll get the hot water and glasses.  Emma is out.”

“I’ll get them,” James said eagerly.  He went out to the kitchen, but Emma was not out.  She was sitting sewing in a gingham apron.

“What do you want?” she demanded severely.

James explained meekly.

“Well, go back to the office, and I’ll fetch the things,” Emma said in a hostile tone.  James obeyed.  Presently Emma appeared bearing a tray with the hot water and two glasses, Gordon did not notice the omission of a third glass, until she had gone out.  “Why, she only brought two glasses,” he said.

James felt absurdly unequal to facing Emma again.  “I don’t think I’ll take anything to-night,” he said.

“Nonsense!” returned Gordon.  He went to the door and shouted for Emma with no response.  “She can’t have gone upstairs so quickly,” he said.  But when after another shout he got no response, he went himself into the dining-room, and got a tumbler from the sideboard.  “She must have gone upstairs at once,” he remarked when he returned.  “The kitchen is dark.”

Georgie K. did not remain very late.  He seemed nervously solicitous with regard to Doctor Gordon.  When he left he shook hands with him, and bade him take good care of himself.

“I love that man,” Gordon said, when the door had closed behind him.

When James entered his room that night he found fresh proof of Emma’s inexplicable hostility.  The room was in total darkness.  He lit matches and searched for lamp or candles, to find none.  He fumbled his way out into the kitchen, and got a little lamp, which gave but a dim light, and read, as was his habit, after he had gone to bed, with exceeding difficulty.  He also was subjected to a most absurd annoyance from the presence of some gritty particles in the bed.  After he extinguished his lamp he could not go to sleep because of them, and lit his lamp again, and tore the sheet off and shook it.  The gritty particles seemed to him to be crumbs of very hard and dry bread.  He made the bed up again after his clumsy masculine fashion.  James had not much manual dexterity, and rested very uncomfortably, from a pronounced inclination of the coverings to slide off his feet, and over one side of the bed.