man, and a good one like as not
comes outen it humbler than a bad most times. Tom have wrapped you
around with some sorter pink cloud of sentiments, tagged you with all
them bokays the world have give you for singing so grand, turned all
them lights on you he first seen you acrost and now he's afraid to come
nigh you. I suspect him of a bad case of chicken-heart and I'm
a-pitying of him most deep. He's just lying down at your feet waiting
to be picked up."

"I wonder where he is!" exclaimed Miss Wingate as a light flashed into
her eyes and a trace of color came back to her cheeks.

"You'll find him," answered the Doctor's mother comfortably, "and when
you do I want you to promise me to put him through a good course of
sprouts. A wife oughtn't to stand on no pedestal for a man, but she
have got no call to make squaw tracks behind him neither. Go on and
find him! A woman have got to come out of the pink cloud to her husband
some time, but she'd better keep a bit to flirt behind the rest of her
life. Look in the office!"

"Well; Martin Luther," remarked Mother a few minutes later, as she
lifted the absolutely dead youngster in her arms and rose to take him
into the house, "life are all alike from Harpeth Hills to Galilee. A
woman can shape up her dough any fancy way she wants and it's likely to
come outen the oven a husband. All Elinory's fine songs are about to
end in little chorus cheeps with Tom under Mother Mayberry's wings, the
Lord be praised!"

And over in the office wing the situation was about as Mother
Mayberry's experienced intuitions had predicted. Miss Wingate found the
young Doctor sitting in the deep window and looking out at Providence
Nob, which the last rays of the sun were dying blood red, with his
strong young face set and white. The battle was still on and his soul
was up in arms.

"Where have you been?" she asked quietly as she came and stood against
the other side of the casement. The pain in his gray eyes set her heart
to throbbing, but she had herself well in hand.

"When I came up the Road the others were all here and I waited to see
you until they were gone," he answered her, just as quietly and in just
as controlled a voice and with possibly just as wild a throb in his
heart "I have been writing to Doctor Stein and there are the Press
bulletins, subject to your approval," He pointed to some letters on the
table which she never deigned to notice. She had drawn herself to her
slim young h