want to know if I shall ever enjoy
Oscar's society again, as I used to enjoy it in the old days before you
cured me--the happy days, Papa-Grosse, when I was an object of pity, and
when all the people spoke of me as Poor Miss Finch?"

I had more to say--but at this place, Grosse (without meaning it, I am
sure) suddenly stopped me. To my amazement, he let go of my hand, and
turned his face away sharply, as if he resented my looking at him. His
big head sank on his breast. He lifted his great hairy hands, shook them
mournfully, and let them fall on his knees. This strange behavior and the
still stranger silence which accompanied it, made me so uneasy that I
insisted on his explaining himself. "What is the matter with you?" I
said. "Why don't you answer me?"

He roused himself with a start, and put his arm round me, with a
wonderful gentleness for a man who was so rough at other times.

"It is nothing, my pretty lofe," he said. "I am out of sort, as you call
it. Your English climates sometimes gives your English blue devil to
foreign mens like me. I have got him now--an English blue devil in a
German inside. Soh! I shall go and walk him out, and come back
empty-cheerful, and see you again." He rose, after this curious
explanation, and attempted some sort of answer--a very odd one--to the
question which I had asked of him. "As to that odder thing," he went on,
"yes-indeed-yes. You have hit your nail on his head. It is, as you say,
your seeings which has got in the way of your feelings. When your
seeings-feelings has got used to one anodder, your seeings will stay
where he is, your feelings will come back to where they was; one will
balance the odder; you will feel as you did; you will see as you didn't;
all at the same times, all jolly-nice again as before. You have my
opinions. Now let me walk out my blue devil. I swear to come back again
with a new inside. By-bye-my-Feench-good-bye."

Saying all this in a violent hurry, as if he was eager to get away, he
gave me a kiss on the forehead, snatched up his shabby hat, and ran out
of the room.

What did it mean?

Does he persist in thinking me seriously ill? I am too weary to puzzle my
brains in the effort to understand my dear old surgeon. It is one o'clock
in the morning; and I have still to write the story of all that happened
later in the day. My eyes are beginning to ache; and, strange to say, I
have hardly been able to see the last two or three lines I have written.