“True, true! And not only that but they’re healthful. Why, you’ll be a new woman in a month or so. I’ll just send my friend a telegram. You leave it up to me, Mrs. Marshall, I’ll arrange the whole thing.”

My mother did not thank him, for, completely egocentric, she was never aware that the betterment of her fortunes initiated in anyone but herself. Yet for his reward, the doctor got a flashing smile of joy which so enlivened her pale face that he could not resist the temptation to touch her and he lifted her hand which still held the hoops and yarn and kissed it. I nearly cried out, for I was not only surprised at the doctor’s premature and uncircumspect advances, but I was afraid my mother would be shocked out of her placid daydream of the mountain cabin and would realize what his motives were. But either through greenness or complacency, she did not object to his caress. Barely conscious of it, in fact, she allowed her hand to lie in his until she was urged to go on with her humming bird.

The doctor rose and as he did so, his greedy eyes suddenly widened with horror as he realized that they had been talking loud enough for me to hear. “I completely forgot! I brought you some flowers. The girl went out to my car to get them . . . it’s strange I didn’t hear her come in.”

“She came in all right,” said my mother. “She’ll be out there doing her lessons. She wants to be a school teacher, doctor. Won’t that be a feather in my cap?”

“It certainly will!” he cried passionately. “She’s a fine girl. Now I must be running along. Au revoir.”

I slipped back to my place at the table and opened Literature and Life at random; the pages fell back at The Deserted Village. I pretended to be so engrossed that I did not hear the doctor come up behind me and jumped, startled, when he said, “Well, now that’s a coincidence. I was about to tell you that the village of Chichester is soon to be deserted by its gracious citizen, your mother. I have been thinking for some time that she needed mountain air to dry up those little scoundrels in her bronchial tubes, and I’ve got her consent to send her off to the Adirondacks.”

“That’s awfully kind of you,” I said. “But we have no money even to pay her railroad fare, and I shouldn’t like to let her go alone anyhow.”

“But she wouldn’t be alone. I would . . . that is, I intend to get a companion for her, a sort of nurse person, you know. I’ll pick up someone or other in New York.”

“But the money . . . we haven’t any money at all.”