The Doctor's long, slender fingers drummed absently on the bedspread. Presently he broke in quite irrelevantly on Mrs. Sequin's steady flow of talk: “I said chestnut brown, Katherine, they are more of a hazel, I should say, a deep hazel with considerable fire.” CHAPTER X The long, summer months dragged their length for Miss Lady, months of heartache and rebellion, of loneliness and tears. Then came a day when, without apparent reason, the shadows lifted. She was tramping across the river flats, with Mike at her heels, when once again she heard the world singing, and before she knew it an answering song sprang to her lips. Uncle Jimpson, plowing near by, looked up and smiled: “Dat's right, Honey; sounds lak ole times to hear you singin' ag'in. I was jus' settin' here steddyin' how good I'd feel ef de Cunnel could come a stompin' 'long an' gimme one of his 'fore-de-war cussin's fer bein' lazy.” “Oh, Uncle Jimpson, if he could! It seems so long since he left us. I have just been over to Miss Ferney's, but she wasn't there. I want to get her to come and stay with me until I know what I am going to do. They expect to take the Doctor home to-morrow.” “Yas'm, Carline was tellin' me. Looks to me lak he's been well enough to go fer some time.” Uncle Jimpson scratched his head wisely. “I don't know what's to become of us,” said Miss Lady ruefully twisting Mike's ears. “They say unless I sell the rest of Thornwood, we won't have money enough to live on. But I won't sell another acre. I'll teach school first.” Uncle Jimpson was scandalized: “Now, Miss Lady, chile, don't you git dem notions in your head. Dem's ole maid notions, you ain't no ole maid yit! Why don't you git married, and git a kerridge, an' I'll dribe an' Carline'll cook an' tak' care de chillun.” “I'm _never_ going to marry, Uncle Jimpson,” Miss Lady declared, with the passionate assurance of youth. “And I am never going to leave Thornwood. If you see Miss Ferney going down the road, ask her to stop by a minute. Come on, Mike, we are late now.” And they were late, five minutes, by the open-faced watch that lay in the Doctor's hand as they entered the garden. He was sitting in his wheel-chair with his books and manuscripts on a table at his elbow, and he lifted an expectant face toward the gate as she entered. It was strange what two months at Thornwood had done for the Doctor. He had been brought there unconscious, a serious, middle-aged professor, who had run in the same groove for twenty years. The same surroundings, the same people, the same monotonous, daily routine had rendered him as rusty and faded as the text-books he lived with. Nothing short of a collision could have jolted him out of his rut, and the collision had arrived.