ep 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 reassurance 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.

"We