"Guy was a fool and I was a brute," the doctor muttered, as he folded
up the bits of paper whose contents he hoped might do much toward
saving Maddy's life.
Then, promising to come again, he rode rapidly away, to visit other
patients, who, that afternoon, were in danger of being sadly
neglected, so constantly was their young physician's mind dwelling
upon the little, low-walled chamber where Maddy Clyde was lying. As
night closed in she knew them all, and heard that Dr. Holbrook had
been there prescribing for her. Turning her face to the wall, she
seemed to be thinking; then, calling her grandmother to her, she
whispered: "Did he smooth my hair back and say, 'poor child?'"
Her grandmother hardly thought he did, though she was not in the room
all the time, she said. "He had stayed a long while and was greatly
interested."
Maddy had a vague remembrance of such an incident, and in her heart
forgave the doctor for his rejection, thinking only how handsome he
had looked, even while tormenting her with such unheard of questions,
and how kind he was to her now. The sight of her grandfather awakened
a new train of ideas, and bidding him to sit beside her, she asked if
their home must be sold. Maddy was not to be put off with an evasion,
and so grandpa told her honestly at last that Slocum would foreclose,
but not while she was sick; he had been seen that day by Mr. Green,
and had promised so much forbearance.
This was the last rational conversation held with Maddy for many a
week, and when next morning the doctor came, there was a look of deep
anxiety upon his face as he watched the alarming symptoms of his
delirious patient, who talked incessantly, not of the examination now,
but of the mortgage and the foreclosure, begging the doctor to see
that the house was not sold, to tell them she was earning thirty-six
dollars by teaching school, that Beauty should be sold to save their
dear old home. All this was strange at first to the doctor, but the
rather voluble Mrs. Green, who had come to Grandma Markham's relief,
enlightened him, dwelling with a kind of malicious pleasure upon the
fact that Maddy's earnings, had she been permitted to get a
"stifficut," were to be appropriated toward paying the debt.
If the doctor had hated himself the previous day when he from the red
cottage gate, he hated himself doubly now as he went dashing down the
road, determined to resign his office of school inspector that very
day. And he did.