"Neither, Constance; there is yet another alternative." Doctor Fuller looked with great satisfaction at Constance's happier face as he spoke; she had been so melancholy when he had come. "I have arranged that you shall be my guest at dinner in my house, and after it we will to work in my substitute for a laboratory. Mistress Hopkins, Constance will be quite safe, be assured; and you, I trust, will not mind a quiet day with Damaris and Oceanus to bear you company?" "And if I did mind it, would that prevent it?" demanded Dame Eliza with a toss of her head. "Not even with a 'by your leave' does Constantia Hopkins arrange her goings and comings." "Which was wholly my fault in not first putting my question to you, instead of to Constance directly," said Doctor Fuller. "And surely there is no excuse for my blundering, I who am trained to feel pulses and look at tongues! But since it is thus happily concluded, and your stepmother is glad to let you have a sort of holiday, come then; hasten, Constance girl!" Constance ran upstairs to hide her laughing face. She came down almost at once with that face shaded by a deep bonnet, a basket hung on her arm, shears sticking up out of it, pulling on long-armed half-gloves as she came. As they walked down the narrow street Constance glanced up at Doctor Fuller, interrogatively. "And----?" the doctor hinted. "And I was wondering whether you were not treating me to-day as your patient?" Constance said. "A patient with a trouble of the mind, and also a heart complaint?" "Which means----?" The doctor again waited for Constance to fill out his question. "Which means that you knew I was sorely troubled about Giles; that he had gone without better drawing to his father; that I was anxious about him, even while wishing him to go; and that you gave me this day in the woods with you for my healing," Constance answered. "At least not for your harm, little maid," said the doctor. "It hath been my experience that the gatherer of herbs gets a healing of spirit that is not set down in our books among the beneficial qualities of the plants, but which may, under conditions, be their best attribute. Although the singing of brooks and birds, the sweetness of the winds, the solemn nobility of the trees, the vastness of the sky, the over-brooding presence of God in His creation are compounded with the herbs, and impart their powers to us with that of the plants." "That is true," said Constance. "I feel my vexations go from me as if my soul were bathed in a miraculous elixir, when I go troubled to the woods and sit in them awhile."