alf out; but
just this for a sample: I had a sitter last week, an old lady; an' the
sittin' was a failure. Yes, I was fishin' and pumpin', but she was
close-mouthed an' suspicious. I got it out of her that she was worried
about her boy. I tried a bad love affair for a lead, an' there was
nothing doing. I tried bad habits and it was just as far away; and I
give it up and was thankful I got fifty cents out of her. Well, while I
sat there listenin' to Mrs. Markham, right into my mind came a
picture--the old lady leanin' over a young man--her pale and shaky and
him surprised an' mad,--and he held a pen in his hand, an' I got the
word 'forgery!' That's one of the things I saw while that influence
come from Mrs. Markham; and if you only knew how seldom I git anything
real nowadays, you'd be as crazy as me about her. I just had to use all
the force I've got to look stupid when the sitters went out."

Rosalie had talked on, oblivious to Dr. Blake's anxieties and feelings.
He sat there, the embodiment of disappointment.

"As perfect a case of auto-suggestion as I ever knew," his professional
mind was thinking. But he expressed in words his deeper thought:

"Then that line fails."

"I'm sorry, boy," responded Rosalie, "but I'm doin' my job straight,
and you wouldn't want it done any other way. And I feel you'll git her
somehow; if not this way, some other. And the longer the wait the
stronger the love, _I_ say. She don't seem any too happy, even if Mrs.
Markham does treat her well."

"Doesn't she?" he asked, his face lighting with a melancholy relief.

"Good symptom for you, ain't it? And I can't think of nothing else that
can be on her mind. But how that girl passes her days, I don't know. It
must be dull for her, poor little bird. She and Mrs. Markham ain't much
apart. She looks at Mrs. Markham like a dog looks at his master, she's
that fond of her. Seems to read a lot, and twice they've been out in
the evening--theater, or so the chauffeur said. We don't have no
private car. We hire one by the month from a garage. An' if I ever
liked a girl and wanted to see her happy, that's the one!"

Rosalie rose. "Must do some shoppin'. Can't say I hope for better news
next week, not the kind of good news you're looking for. But I'm hopin'
for good news in the end."

Dr. Blake remained sitting, his head dropped in depression on his
breast. Rosalie stooped to pat it with a motherly gesture.

"Just remember this," she said, "you lo