"Don't say 'poor Miss Harriet!' to her. Dr. Lavendar, Harriet and I have been friends since we were put into short dresses--and she spoke to me to-day in a way--! Well, of course, I shall go back; but I was ready to say I wouldn't. And she treats poor old Annie outrageously." Dr. Lavendar nodded again. He himself had seen her several times, but she had never let him be personal: "Was Mrs. Drayton still gossiping about her soul?" "Wasn't it nearly time to get a new carpet for the chancel?" etc., etc. It was her way of defending herself--and Dr. Lavendar understood. So he only brought her his kindly gossip or his church news, and he never looked at her mournfully; but neither did he ever once refer to a possible recovery--that poor, friendly pretence that so tries the soul absorbed in its own solemn knowledge! But in the afternoon, after his talk with Mrs. Barkley, the old man went plodding up the hill to the Stuffed-Animal House, with tender and relentless purpose in his face. It was a serene September day, full of pulsing light and fragrant with the late mowing. William King's mare was hitched to a post by the green gate in the hedge, and the doctor was giving her a handful of grass as Dr. Lavendar came up. "How is Miss Harriet, Willy?" the old man said. William climbed into the buggy and flicked with his whip at the ironweed by the road-side. "Oh--about the same. Dr. Lavendar, it's cruel--it's cruel!" "What's cruel, William?" "I can't give her any opiate--to amount to anything." "Why?" "Her heart." "But you can't let her suffer!" "If I stopped the suffering," the doctor said, laconically, "it would be murder." "You mean--" "Depressants, to amount to anything, would kill her." Dr. Lavendar looked up into the sky silently. Willy King gathered up the reins. "And Annie?" Dr. Lavendar said. "She is just a poor, frantic child. I can't make her understand why Miss Harriet shouldn't have two powders, when one 'sugar,' as she calls it, gives her a little comfort for a little while. She says, 'Harriet wouldn't let a squirrel stay hurt.' Miss Harriet says she told her the other day that she wasn't a squirrel; but it didn't seem to make any difference to Miss Annie. She has a queer elemental reasonableness about her, hasn't she? Well, I must go. Dr. Lavendar, I--I hope you won't mind if I say that perhaps--I mean she doesn't want anybody to refer to--to anything religious." "William," said the old man, mildly, "if you can mention anything which is not religious to a woman who is going to die within a very few weeks, I will consider it."