"No," she said quietly, "there's nothing I want to see John about and there's nothing for him to see me about any more. I guess," she smiled at the gruff old doctor, "you're about the only man I can stand the sight of or who would put up with me." "Fanny," Doc Philipps told her, "if you don't buck up and get well, if you die on my hands, it will be the first mean thing you ever did." "Oh, well--it would be the last," laughed Fanny. "Fanny, don't you know that Seth Curtis and nearly all the town comes here at least once a day? How do you suppose John and Seth and the rest of us will feel if you just quit and go?" And then in bitterness of heart Fanny answered. "Oh, I'm tired of living, of being snubbed and made fun of. I'm past caring how anybody else will feel. I tell you I'm a misfit. God never took pains to finish me. I've been a miserable failure, no good to anybody. My children will be better off without me. John said so." "My God!" groaned the old doctor, "did John say that?" He knew now that no medicine that he could give, no skill of his would mend a heart bruised like that. "Yes--he said that--and a whole lot more. Said I've eternally disgraced him and dragged him down and will land him in jail or the poorhouse. And I guess maybe it's so. Only all the time he was talking I kept thinking how he teased me to marry him. I really liked Bud Willis over in Elmwood better, in a way, than I did John. And I meant to marry Bud. He wasn't as good a boy as John, but he was so jolly and we'd have had such a good time together that I'd never have got mixed up in any mess like this. Maybe we would have ended in the poorhouse but we'd have had a good time going, and I bet Bud and I would have found something to laugh at even when we got there. Oh, I'm glad it's over. Don't think I'm afraid to die. I kind of hate to leave Robbie. Robbie's like me. And some day somebody'll tell him what a fool he is--like they told me. I wish I could warn him or learn him not to care. But, barring Robbie, I'm not afraid to go. But I'd be afraid to live. To live all the rest of my days on my back or in a chair--I--who was made to go? John can't abide me well and able to work. He'd hate the sight of me useless. No, sir! There's nothing nor nobody I'd sit in a chair for all the rest of my life." "Yes, there is--Peggy." John spoke from the shadowy doorway, for the dusk had fallen. "You will do it for me, girl. I'll get you the nicest chair and the prettiest crutches. And when you are tired of them I'll carry you about in my arms. And you'll never again--I swear it--be sorry that you didn't marry Bud Willis." The spring twilight filled the room. Through it the doctor tiptoed to the door and left these two to build a new world out of the fragments and blunders of the old. CHAPTER XXII BEFORE THE DAWN