Miss Patty soon came in again, clothed but not quite in her right mind. Her color was still high and she seemed a little fl.u.s.tered.

Doctor Beatty did not turn around.

"Oh, there you are, Patty," he said. "I won't look, you know, until you give the word."

"How absurd!" Miss Patty exclaimed. She meant to be very dignified, but she was very nearly smiling. "But that is to be expected. You always were absurd."

The doctor's visit was a long one; and, when it was done, Miss Patty went to the door with him.

"It has seemed quite like old times," she said softly.

For a moment the doctor did not know what she was talking about.

"What?" he asked blankly. "Oh, yes, it has, more or less, hasn't it?

Good-bye, Patty. Keep your liver on the job. You're looking a little bit yellow."

There were tears in Miss Patty's eyes when she went back to sit with Sally.

"Doctor Beatty," she remarked after a short silence, "is not what he was in the old days. He seems to have coa.r.s.ened."

Sally did not know what reply to make, so she made none.

"He never used to say anything about my--my liver," resumed Miss Patty, "when he called. He was practising then, too. It is painful to me to see such a change in a man like him. Now, in the old days, when he used to be here a great deal,--a _very_ great deal, Sally,--he was not at all like that." And Miss Patty sighed.

Just then the maid came up to announce the Carlings.

"An', Miss Patty," she continued significantly, "Charlie's in the kitchen."

"Oh, is he? I'll come right down and get him." The maid withdrew. "The dear little boy!" said Miss Patty. "I suppose he's eating what he ought not to. I'd like to let him have anything he wants, but I know it wouldn't be good for him."

She rose rather hastily, but paused with her hand on the door. "Of course, Sally," she said with a short little laugh, "you are not to think that I had any--Oh, here are the twins, Sally."

Miss Patty fled and the Carlings entered.

"H--h--h.e.l.lo, Sally," they cried. "H--h--how's your l--l--leg?"

Sally laughed. "It's my foot, not my leg, and it doesn't hurt me at all, hardly."

This appeared to upset the concerted programme of the twins.

"B--but y--you s--s--said your l--l--leg hurt," objected Harry.

"Well, so it did," Sally replied; "but it's my foot that's broken."

"Your f--f--foot b--b--broken!" said Horry in astonishment. "H--h--how c--can a f--f--foot b--be b--b--broken? D--d--does it w--work ar--r--round?"

"Not now, for it's all done up stiff in bandages."

Horry was not allowed to pursue his inquiries, for the maid was at the door again, announcing Richard Torrington. Sally sat up straighter, and her cheeks were flushed and her eyes rather bright. The twins eyed her with suspicion.

As they pa.s.sed down the broad stairs Harry nudged Horry again.

"S--S--S--al--l--ly's s--stuck on D--D--d.i.c.k," he whispered.

"S--s--sing it," said Horry, chuckling.

"W--w--won't d--do it," replied Harry indignantly. His indignation rose at every step. "Y--you r--r--rotten b--b.u.m, y--you! W--w--wanted t--to m--m--make m--me m--m--make a f--f--" The front door banged behind the twins, and Sally heard no more.

She had heard Harry's whispered remark and had glanced fearfully at d.i.c.k. He seemed unconscious, and a great joy surged in Sally's heart.

The first morning that Sally came downstairs--on crutches--she managed her crutches unskillfully and fell half the flight. Uncle John and Cousin Patty, followed closely by Charlie, hurried to her. Uncle John was the most alarmed. He stooped and would have raised her head, but Sally saved him that trouble and smiled at him.

"I'm not hurt one mite," she said. She was not. "Wasn't I lucky?"

He gave a great sigh of relief.

"I was afraid," he replied. "I'm thankful that you're not. Are you sure, Sally?" he asked anxiously.

"Oh, yes, I'm sure." And, to convince him, Sally jumped up, nimbly, and hopped about on one foot.

Uncle John smiled. "It isn't very wise to try such experiments. Now, you're to sit beside me at the table, hereafter. We can't risk that foot, for it would be more of a misfortune to our Sally and to us if anything serious happened to it than she realizes."

Sally had noted the way he spoke of "our Sally"; it was affectionate, genuinely so. There could not be the least doubt about it.

"Now," he continued, "you will please to take my arm."

"Oh, father," remonstrated Miss Patty, "is it safe?"

"Quite safe, Patty," he returned quietly, "and I wish it."

It is not to be wondered at if Sally squeezed his arm a little. She could not say what she wanted to, right there before Cousin Patty and Charlie. It is hard to see why she couldn't, but Uncle John seemed to understand; and they walked solemnly in to breakfast, Sally wielding one crutch and Uncle John the other.

"We're two old cripples, Sally," said he.

CHAPTER IV

Sally wrote Fox about it all, of course. There would have been no excuse for her if she had not; and she wrote Henrietta, too, although she had some difficulty in making the two letters cover the same ground without saying the same thing. This was one of the times when Sally's letters to Henrietta came in bunches. She alluded to her accident in one of her letters to Doctor Galen, and he answered it almost immediately, giving her four pages of excellent advice and ending by taking it all back.

"Fox tells me," he wrote, "that you have Meriwether Beatty looking after you. In that case please consider all this unsaid. I know something of Doctor Beatty and I am sure you couldn't be in better hands--unless in the hands of Doctor Fox Sanderson. Have you heard that Fox has decided to be a doctor and that he is studying with me besides taking his course in the medical school?"

No, Sally had not heard it. Fox was strangely reticent about himself.

He had not mentioned, even, that he had found a tenant for their house; a tenant who would respect all of Sally's little affections--or great affections, if you prefer--for trees from which the gynesaurus had been wont to gaze out over the coal swamps, ages ago; a tenant who, strangely enough, was named Sanderson. She learned this piece of news, or inferred it, from one of Henrietta's letters. Henrietta had supposed that Sally knew it already.

Sally was feeling very tenderly affectionate towards Fox over this news, and very much elated over the doctor's announcement, for it could hardly fail to be evident what prosperity for Fox was implied in Doctor Galen's great good will. She wrote to Fox at once, congratulating him.

"Everybody here seems to think that Doctor Galen is It, and so do I,"