Or else," continued Helen, "he would weave a thousand yards of some
light fabric, and make balloons; then he would stop the pitch-fountain,
bore a hole in the rock near it, and so get the gas, fill the balloons,
inscribe them with our sad story and our latitude and longitude, and send
them flying all over the ocean--there!"

Hazel was amazed.

"I resign my functions to you," said he. "What imagination! What
invention!"

"Oh, dear no," said Helen slyly; "acts of memory sometimes pass for
invention, you know. Shall I tell you? when first you fell ill you were
rather light-headed, and uttered the strangest things. They would have
made me laugh heartily, only I couldn't--for crying. And you said that
about kites and balloons, every word."

"Did I? then I have most brains when I have least reason, that's all."

"Ay," said Helen, "and other strange things--very strange and bitter
things. One I should like to ask you about, what on earth you could mean
by it; but perhaps you meant nothing, after all."

"I'll soon tell you," said Hazel; but he took the precaution to add,
"provided I know what it means myself."

She looked at him steadily, and was on the point of seeking the
explanation so boldly offered; but her own courage failed her. She
colored and hesitated.

"I shall wait," said she, "till you are quite, quite well. That will be
soon, I hope; only you must be good, and obey my prescriptions. Cultivate
patience; it is a wholesome plant; bow the pride of that intellect which
you see a fever can lay low in an hour. Aspire no more beyond the powers
of man. Here we shall stay unless Providence sends us a ship. I have
ceased to repine. And don't you begin. Dismiss that problem altogether;
see how hot it has made your poor brow. Be good now, and dismiss it; or
else do as I do--fold it up, put it quietly away in a corner of your
mind, and, when you least expect, it will pop out solved."

(Oh, comfortable doctrine! But how about Jamie Watt's headaches? And why
are the signs of hard thoughts so much stronger in his brow and face than
in Shakespeare's? Mercy on us, there is another problem.)

Hazel smiled, well pleased, and leaned back, soothed, silenced, subdued,
by her soft voice and the exquisite touch of her velvet hand on his hot
brow; for, woman-like, she laid her hand like down on that burning brow
to aid her words in soothing it. Nor did it occur to him just then that
this admonition, delivered with a kind maternal