I couldn’t say a word, and I am sure I don’t know what I should have done if it hadn’t been for the doctor.  He leaned forward, and his deep eyes came out in their wonderful way and seemed to collect every pair of eyes at the table, even the most astounded.  We all held our breaths and waited for him to speak.

“No wonder we are all stricken dumb at Mrs. Carter’s telegram,” he said in his deep voice that commands everybody and everything, even the terrors of birth and death.  “The whole town will be paralysed at the news that its most distinguished citizen is only going to give them two days to get ready to receive him.  I can see the panic the brass band will have now getting the brass polished up, and I want to be the one to tell Mayor Pollard myself, so as to suggest to him to have at least a two-hour speech of welcome to hand out at the train.  We’ll make it a great time for him when he lands in the old town.”

* * * * *

Tom took Pet home early, and I hope they walked in the moonlight for hours.  Tom is the kind of man that any pretty girl who is sympathetic enough in the moonlight could comfort for anything.  I’m not at all worried about him, but—­

The hour I sat in the garden and talked to Judge Wade must have brought grey hairs to my head if it was daylight and I could see them.  Ruth Clinton had said good-bye with the loveliest haunted look in her great dark eyes, and I had felt as if I had killed something that was alive.  Dr. John had been called from his coffee to a patient and had gone with just a friendly word of good night, and the others had at last left the judge and me alone—­also in the moonlight, which I wished in my heart somebody would put out.

To-night he looked me in the face and told me how to marry, and I’m not sure yet that I won’t do as he says.  Of course I’m in love with Alfred, but if he wants me he had better get me away quick before the judge makes all his arrangements.  A woman loves to be courted with poems and flowers and deference, but she’s wonderfully apt to marry the man who says, “Don’t argue, but put on your bonnet and come with me.”

Oh, I’m crying, crying in my heart, which is worse than in my eyes, as I sit and look across my garden, where the cold moon is hanging low over the tall trees behind the doctor’s house and his light in his room is burning warm and bright.  They are right:  he doesn’t care if I am going away for ever with Alfred.  His quick eulogy of him, and the lovely warm look he poured over poor frightened me at his side, told me that once and for all.  Still, we have been so close together over his baby, and I have grown so dependent on him for so many things, that it cuts into me like a hot knife that he shouldn’t care if he lost me—­even for a neighbour.  I shouldn’t mind not having any husband if I could always live close by him and Billy like this, and if I married Judge Wade—­no, I don’t like that! Of course, I’m going with Alfred, now that an accident has made me announce the fact to the whole town before he even knows it himself, but wherever I go, that light in the room with that lonely man is going to burn in my heart.  I hope it will throw a glow over Alfred!