"When did she die? What happened?" The Young Doctor made a gesture of dissent and crawled into a chair and began to fumble with the paper in his hand. Then he shivered and stared his Best Friend straight in the face. "You might say," he stammered, "that I have just heard from the Sick-A-Bed Lady's Husband--" he choked at the word, and his Friend sat up with astonishment: "You heard me _say_ I had heard from the Sick-A-Bed Lady's Husband?" he persisted. "_You_ heard me say it, mind you. You heard me say that her Husband is sick in Japan--detained indefinitely--so we are afraid he won't get here in time for her confinement--" The sweat broke out in great drops on his forehead, and his hand that held the sheet of paper shook like a hand that has strained its muscles with heavy weights. The Best Friend took a scathing glance at the scribbled words on the paper and laughed mirthlessly. "You're a good fool," he said, "a good fool, and I'll publish your blessed lie to the whole stupid village, if that's what you want." But the Young Doctor sat oblivious with his head in his hands, muttering: "Blind fool, blind fool, how could I have been such a blind fool?" "What is it to _you_?" asked his Best Friend abruptly. The Young Doctor jumped to his feet and squared his shoulders. "It's _this_ to me," he cried, "that I wanted her for my own! I could have cured her. I tell you I could have cured her. I wanted her for my own!" "She's only a waif," said the Best Friend tersely. "Waif?" cried the Young Doctor, "_waif_? No woman whom I love is a _waif_!" His face blazed furiously. "The woman I _love_--that little gentle girl--a waif?--without a home?--I would make a cool home for her out of Hell itself, if it was necessary! Damn, damn, _damn_ the brute that deserted her, but _home is all around her_ NOW! Do I think the Old Doctor guessed about it? _N-o!_ Nobody could have guessed about it. Nobody could have known about it much before this. You say _again_ she isn't _anybody's_? I'll prove to you as soon as it's decent that she's _mine_." His Best Friend took him by the shoulder and shook him roughly. "It is no time," he said, "for you to be courting a woman." "I'll court my Sweetheart when and where I choose!" the Young Doctor answered defiantly, and left the house. The night seemed a thousand miles long to him, but when he slept at last and woke again, the air was fresh and hopeful with a new day. He dressed quickly and hurried off to the scene of last night's tragedy, where he found the Old Housekeeper arguing in the doorway with a small boy. She turned to the Doctor complacently. "He's begging for the postage stamp off the Japanese letter," she exclaimed, "and I'm just telling him I sent it to my Sister's boy in Montreal." There was no slightest trace of self-consciousness in her manner, and the Young Doctor could not help but smile as he beckoned her into the house and shut the door. Then, "Have you told her?" he asked eagerly.