The Little Doctor leaned from the window and called down the hill to her recovered patient--more properly, her nearly recovered patient; for Chip still walked with the aid of a cane, though by making use of only one stirrup he could ride very well. He limped up the hill to her, and sat down on the top step of the porch. “What's the excitement now?” he asked, banteringly. “I've got the best, the most SPLENDID news--you couldn't guess what in a thousand years!” “Then I won't try. It's too hot.” Chip took off his hat and fanned himself with it. “Well, can't you LOOK a little bit excited? Try and look the way I feel! Anybody as cool as you are shouldn't suffer with the heat.” “I don't know--I get pretty hot, sometimes. Well, what is the most splendid news? Can't you tell a fellow, after calling him up here in the hot sun?” “Well, listen. The Gilroy hospital--you know, where Cecil is”--Chip knew--“has a case of blighted love and shattered hopes”--Chip's foolish, man-heart nearly turned a somersault. Was it possible?--“and it's the luckiest thing ever happened.” “Yes?” Chip wished to goodness she would get to the point. She could be direct enough in her statements when what she said was going to hurt a fellow. His heart was thumping so it hurt him. “Yes. A doctor there was planning to get married and go away on his honeymoon, you know--” Chip nodded, half suffocated with crowding, incredulous hopes. “Well, and now he isn't. His ladylove was faithless and loves another, and his honeymoon is indefinitely postponed. Do you see now where the good news comes in?” Chip shook his head once and looked away up the grade. Funny, but something had gone wrong with his throat. He was half choked. “Well, you ARE dull! Now that fellow isn't going to have any vacation, so Cecil can come out, right away! Next week! Think of it!” Chip tried to think of it, but he couldn't think of anything, just then. He was only conscious of wishing Whizzer had made a finish of the job, up there on the Hog's Back that day. His heart no longer thumped--it was throbbing in a tired, listless fashion. “Why can't you look a little bit pleased?” smiled the torturer from the window. “You sit there like a--an Indian before a cigar store. You've just about the same expression.” “I can't help it. I never was fierce to meet strangers, somehow.” “Judging from my own experience, I think you are uncommonly fierce at meeting strangers. I haven't forgotten how unmercifully you snubbed me when I came to the ranch, or how you risked my neck on the grade, up there, trying to make me scared enough to scream. I didn't, though! I wanted to, I'll admit, when you made the horses run down the steepest part--but I didn't, and so I could easily forgive you.” “Could you?” said Chip, in a colorless tone. “If you had gained your object, I couldn't have,” remarked she. “I did, though.” “You did? Didn't you do it just to frighten me?”