"You will have to come and see the cave as soon as you are well enough to walk, Mrs. Gaunt," said Ferris, turning round with a smile which he himself thought enough to melt the most stony-hearted beauty. CHAPTER XVII WHAT COMES NEXT? "_But, ah! for a man to arise in me, That the man I am may cease to be!_"--Tennyson. Joey was in her garden next morning, tying up dahlias, whose heads, heavy with bloom, were beginning to droop, when she caught sight of the doctor crossing the lawn. "Hallo!" she said cheerfully, pushing back her untidy hair from her red, hot face. "How are you? Been to Omberleigh? Does she want to change the time of her drive?" "She sent no message," he replied, when he had shaken hands. "I have come to see you 'on my own,' as I expect you would put it. I want to say something to you." "Cough it up," said Joey, speaking lightly enough, but with a change of expression--a dawning of apprehension in her little, unexpressive eyes, which the doctor knew and was always sorry to see. "Nothing serious," he told her in a hurry. "Don't jump so to conclusions, Joey. This is merely medical orders. You must keep Ferris away when you are in charge of Mrs. Gaunt, please." Joey stooped over the garden bed to pick up her hank of bass and bundle of sticks. When she arose, her face was even redder. "Well," she said, "it isn't easy to tell Percy to keep out of his own car." The doctor looked at her with eyes of friendly pity and sympathy. He had known her from childhood, and had brought her three children into the world. He saw more of the workings of the household at Perley Hatch than anybody else in the neighbourhood. "I know it isn't," he answered, "but if it can't be done, say so, and Mrs. Gaunt must give up her tours with you. I may say that I suggested them at first not for her sake only. I thought a friend of your own sex, within reach, would be such a happy chance for you." Joey had turned and strolled at his side towards a garden seat. They sat down, she with her habitual inelegance, her legs wide apart, her thick garden boots firmly planted on the gravel. "I like her," she burst out with energy. "I like her to rights. She's got no nonsense about her; you should have seen her with the kiddies yesterday! I should hate to lose her! But what harm can poor old Percy do her? Of course he's in love with her, but so he is with every pretty woman he sees. And it is such a good thing"--she broke off here, her thick mouth quivering. The doctor in his compassion understood as well as if she had finished the sentence. The thought in her mind was--"it is such a good thing for him to be interested in a woman of our own class, where no harm can come of it, rather than in the daughter of the publican in Buxton, in whose bar he has spent half the day for the past month."