“If she could awaken,” he said, laying the hand softly down and placing his other upon her forehead, where the great sweat drops lay. And, after a time, Maddy did awaken, but in the eyes fixed, for a moment, so intently on him, there was no look of recognition, and the doctor was half glad that it was so. He did not wish her to associate him with her late disastrous disappointment; he would rather she should think of him as some one come to cure her, for cure her he would, he said to himself, as he gazed into her childish face and thought how sad it was for such as she to die. When first he entered the cottage he had been struck with the extreme plainness of the furniture, betokening that wealth had not there an abiding place, but now he forgot everything except the sick girl, who grew more and more restless, talking of him and the Latin verb which meant “to love,” she said, and which was not in the grammar. “Guy was a fool and I was a brute,” the doctor muttered, as he folded up the bits of paper whose contents he hoped might do much toward saving Maddy’s life. Then, promising to come again, he rode rapidly away, to visit other patients, who, that afternoon, were in danger of being sadly neglected, so constantly was their young physician’s mind dwelling upon the little, low-walled chamber where Maddy Clyde was lying. As night closed in she knew them all, and heard that Dr. Holbrook had been there prescribing for her. Turning her face to the wall, she seemed to be thinking; then, calling her grandmother to her, she whispered: “Did he smooth my hair back and say, ‘poor child?’” Her grandmother hardly thought he did, though she was not in the room all the time, she said. “He had stayed a long while and was greatly interested.” Maddy had a vague remembrance of such an incident, and in her heart forgave the doctor for his rejection, thinking only how handsome he had looked, even while tormenting her with such unheard of questions, and how kind he was to her now. The sight of her grandfather awakened a new train of ideas, and bidding him to sit beside her, she asked if their home must be sold. Maddy was not to be put off with an evasion, and so grandpa told her honestly at last that Slocum would foreclose, but not while she was sick; he had been seen that day by Mr. Green, and had promised so much forbearance.