"That," said Hamilton Spence, with resignation, "that must be father having a fit!"

CHAPTER IV

Letter from Professor Hamilton Spence to his friend, John Rogers, M.D.

DEAR Bones: Chortle if you want to--your worst prognostications have come true. The unexpectedness of the sciatic nerve, as set forth in your parting discourse, has amply proved itself. The dashed thing is all that you said of it--and more. It did not even permit me to collapse gracefully--or to choose my public. Your other man had a policeman, hadn't he?

Here I am, stranded upon a sofa from which I cannot get up and detained indefinitely upon a mountain from which I cannot get down. My nurse (I have a nurse) refuses to admit the mountain. She insists upon referring to this dizzy height as "just above sea-level" and declares that the precipitous ascent thereto is "a slight grade." Otherwise she is quite sane.

But sanity is more than I feel justified in claiming for anyone else in this household. There is Li Ho, for instance. Well, I'm not certain about Li Ho. He may be Chinese-sane. My nurse says he is. But I have no doubts at all about my host. He is so queer that I sometimes wonder if he is not a figment. Perhaps I imagine him. If so, my imagination is going strong. What I seem to see is a little old man in a frock coat so long that his legs (like those of the Queen of Spain) are negligible.

He has a putty colored face (so blurred that I keep expecting him to rub it out altogether), white hair, pale blue eyes--and an umbrella.

Yesterday, attempting to establish cordial relations, I asked him why the umbrella. He had a fit right on the spot?

Let me explain about the fits. When his daughter just said, "Father will have a fit," I thought she spoke in a Pickwickian sense, meaning, "Father will experience annoyance." But when I heard him having it, I realized that she had probably been quite literal. When father has a fit he bangs his umbrella to the floor and jumps on it. Also he tears his hair. I have seen the pieces.

I said to my nurse: "The mention of his umbrella seems to agitate your father." She turned quite pale. "It does," she said. "I hope you haven't mentioned it." I said that I had merely asked for information.

"And did you get it?" asked she. I said that I had--since it was apparent that one has to carry an umbrella if one wishes to have it handy to jump upon. She didn't laugh at all, and looked so withdrawn that it was quite plain I need expect no elucidation from her.

I had to dismiss the subject altogether. But, later on, Li Ho (who appears to partially approve of me) gave a curious side light on the matter. At night as he was tucking me up safely (the sofa is slippery), he said, "Honorable Boss got hole in head-top. Sun velly bad. Umblella keep him off."

"But he carries it at night, too," I objected.

Li Ho wagged his parchment head. "Keep moon off all same. Moon muchy more bad. Full moon find urn hole. Make Honorable Boss much klasy."

Remarkably lucid explanation--don't you think so? The "hole in head top" is evidently Li Ho's picturesque figure for "mental vacuum."

Therefore I gather that our yellow brother suspects his honorable boss of being weak-headed, a condition aggravated by the direct rays of the sun and especially by the full moon. He may be right--though the old man seems harmless enough. "Childlike and bland" describes him usually.

Though there are times when he looks at me with those pale eyes--and I wish that I were not quite so helpless! He dislikes me. But I have known quite sane people do that.

I am writing nonsense. One has to, with sciatica. I hope this confounded leg lets me get some sleep tonight.

Yours,

B.

P.S.: Not exactly an ideal home for a young girl--is it?

CHAPTER V

It had rained all night. It had rained all yesterday. It had rained all the day before. It was raining still. Apparently it could go on raining indefinitely.

Miss Farr said not. She said that it would be certain to clear up in a day or two. "And then," she said, "you will forget that it ever rained."

Professor Spence doubted it. He had a good memory.

"You look much better this morning," his nurse went on. "Have you tried to move your leg yet?"

"I am thinking of trying it."

This was not exactly a fib on the part of the professor because he was thinking of it. But it did not include the whole truth, because he had already tried it, tried it very successfully only a few moments before.

First he had made sure that he was alone in the room and then he had proceeded with the trial. Very cautiously he had drawn his lame leg up, and tenderly stretched it out. He had turned over and back again. He had wiggled his toes to see how many of them were present--only the littlest toe was still numb. He had realized that he was much better.

If the improvement kept on, he knew that in a day or so he would be able to walk with the aid of a cane. And he also knew that, with his walking, his status as an invalid guest would vanish. Luckily, no one but himself could say when the walking stage was reached--hence the strict privacy of his experiments.

"Father thinks that you should be able to walk in about three days,"

said Miss Farr cheerfully.

Spence said he hoped that Dr. Farr was right. But the rain, he feared, might keep him back a bit, "I am really sorry," he added, "that my presence is so distasteful to the doctor. I have been here almost two weeks and I have seen so little of him that I'm afraid I am keeping him out of his own house."

"No, you are not doing that," the girl's rea.s.surance was cordial enough, "Father is having an outside spell just now. He quite often does. Sometimes for weeks together he spends most of his time out of doors. Then, quite suddenly, he will settle down and be more like--other people."

It was her way, the professor noticed, to state facts, not to explain them.

"Then he has what I call an 'inside spell,'" she went on. "That is when he does most of his writing. He does some quite good things, you know.

And a few of them get published."

"Scientific articles?" asked Spence.

"Well--articles. You might not call them scientific. Science is very exact, isn't it? Father would rather be interesting than exact any day."

Her hearer found no difficulty in believing this.

"His folk-lore stories are the best--and the least exact," continued she, heedless of the shock inflicted upon the professorial mind. "He knows exactly the kind of things Indians tell, and tells it very much better."

"You mean he--he fakes it?"

"Well--he calls it 'editing.'"

"But, my dear girl, you can't edit folk-lore!"

"Father can."

"But--but it isn't done! Such material loses all value if not authentic."

"Does it?"

The question was indifferent. So indifferent, in the face of a matter of such moment, that Hamilton Spence writhed upon his couch. Here at least there was room for genuine missionary work. He cleared his throat.

"I will tell you just how much it matters," he began firmly. But the fates were not with him, neither was his audience. Attracted by some movement which he had missed she, the audience, had slipped to the door, and was opening it cautiously.

"What is it?" asked the baffled lecturer crossly.

"S-ssh! I think it's Sami."