"
"I can't promise you so small a world," remarked the Young Doctor with a
kind smile, his arm resting on the side of the bed, his chair drawn
alongside. "You will have to face the whole universe to-morrow, same as
ever."
She looked perplexed, and then said to him: "I used to think it was a
beautiful world, and they try to make me think it is yet; but it isn't."
"Who try to make you?" he asked.
"Oh, my bird Richard, and Nigger the black cat, and Jumbo, the dog," she
replied.
Her eyes closed, then opened strangely wide upon him in an eager, staring
appeal.
"Don't you want to know about me?" she asked. "I want to tell you--I
want to tell you. I'm tired of telling it all over to myself."
The Young Doctor did not want to know. As a doctor he did not want to
know.
"Not now," he said firmly. "Tell me when I come again."
A look of pain came into her face. "But who can tell when you'll come
again!" she pleaded.
"When I will things to be, they generally happen," he answered in a
commonplace tone. "You are my patient now, and I must keep an eye on you.
So I'll come."
Again, with an almost spasmodical movement towards him, she said:
"I must tell you. I wanted to tell you the first day I saw you. You
seemed the same kind of man my father was. My name's Louise. It was my
mother made me do it. There was a mortgage--I was only sixteen. It's
three years ago.
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