Uncle John smiled. "It isn't very wise to try such experiments. Now, you're to sit beside me at the table, hereafter. We can't risk that foot, for it would be more of a misfortune to our Sally and to us if anything serious happened to it than she realizes." Sally had noted the way he spoke of "our Sally"; it was affectionate, genuinely so. There could not be the least doubt about it. "Now," he continued, "you will please to take my arm." "Oh, father," remonstrated Miss Patty, "is it safe?" "Quite safe, Patty," he returned quietly, "and I wish it." It is not to be wondered at if Sally squeezed his arm a little. She could not say what she wanted to, right there before Cousin Patty and Charlie. It is hard to see why she couldn't, but Uncle John seemed to understand; and they walked solemnly in to breakfast, Sally wielding one crutch and Uncle John the other. "We're two old cripples, Sally," said he. CHAPTER IV Sally wrote Fox about it all, of course. There would have been no excuse for her if she had not; and she wrote Henrietta, too, although she had some difficulty in making the two letters cover the same ground without saying the same thing. This was one of the times when Sally's letters to Henrietta came in bunches. She alluded to her accident in one of her letters to Doctor Galen, and he answered it almost immediately, giving her four pages of excellent advice and ending by taking it all back. "Fox tells me," he wrote, "that you have Meriwether Beatty looking after you. In that case please consider all this unsaid. I know something of Doctor Beatty and I am sure you couldn't be in better hands--unless in the hands of Doctor Fox Sanderson. Have you heard that Fox has decided to be a doctor and that he is studying with me besides taking his course in the medical school?" No, Sally had not heard it. Fox was strangely reticent about himself. He had not mentioned, even, that he had found a tenant for their house; a tenant who would respect all of Sally's little affections--or great affections, if you prefer--for trees from which the gynesaurus had been wont to gaze out over the coal swamps, ages ago; a tenant who, strangely enough, was named Sanderson. She learned this piece of news, or inferred it, from one of Henrietta's letters. Henrietta had supposed that Sally knew it already. Sally was feeling very tenderly affectionate towards Fox over this news, and very much elated over the doctor's announcement, for it could hardly fail to be evident what prosperity for Fox was implied in Doctor Galen's great good will. She wrote to Fox at once, congratulating him.