This new morality, for which neither religious doctrine nor experimental philosophy had prepared her, stunned her into silence; and in that silence he repeated, with a gesture of irritation, as if the admission annoyed him excessively: "She'll be in her grave in six months, but you couldn't expect me to tell her so." "You mean there is no hope?" "Not of a cure. Her lungs are too far gone. Of course, if she gets out of doors, she may linger a little longer than we expect. Air and proper nourishment work wonders sometimes." "But don't you think she ought to have time to prepare?" It was the question her mother would have asked, and she uttered it regretfully but firmly. "Prepare? You mean for her funeral?" "No, I mean for eternity." If she had presented some prehistoric fossil for his inspection, he might have examined it with the same curious interest. "For eternity?" he repeated. Dorinda wavered. Though honest doubt was not unknown at Pedlar's Mill, it had seldom resisted successfully the onslaught of orthodox dogma. To the girl, with her intelligence and independence, many of her mother's convictions had become merely habits of speech; yet, after all, was not habit rather than belief the ruling principle of conduct? "Will you let her die without time for repentance?" something moved her to ask. "Repentance! Good Lord! What opportunity has she ever had to commit a pleasure?" Then, as if the discussion irritated him, he picked up his medicine case which he had laid on the railing of the porch. "I'll be passing again about sundown," he remarked lightly, "and if you're ready to start home, I'll pick you up as I go by." As casually as that! "I'll pick you up as I go by!" Just as if she were a bag of flour, she told herself in resentful despair. As he went from her down the path to the gate, she resolved that she would not let him drive her home if it killed her. "I shan't be here at sundown," she called after him in the voice of a Covenanter. He was almost at the gate. Her heart sank like a wounded bird, and then, recovering its lightness, soared up into the clouds. "Well, I'll manage to come a little earlier," he responded, with tender gaiety. "Don't disappoint me."