dampness. It's grown chilly. The fever comes so suddenly, you know, and
it might be wide to take the tincture. I'll go and get it, dear, at
once. It's better." And before he could object she had left the room to
bring the homeopathic dose that she believed in, and that, to please
her, he swallowed by the tumbler-full from week to week.

And the moment the door closed behind her, Sanderson began again, though
now in quite a different tone. Mr. Bittacy sat up in his chair. The two
men obviously resumed the conversation--the real conversation
interrupted beneath the cedar--and left aside the sham one which was so
much dust merely thrown in the old lady's eyes.

"Trees love you, that's the fact," he said earnestly. "Your service to
them all these years abroad has made them know you."

"Know me?"

"Made them, yes,"--he paused a moment, then added,--"made them _aware
of your presence_; aware of a force outside themselves that
deliberately seeks their welfare, don't you see?"

"By Jove, Sanderson--!" This put into plain language actual sensations
he had felt, yet had never dared to phrase in words before. "They get
into touch with me, as it were?" he ventured, laughing at his own
sentence, yet laughing only with his lips.

"Exactly," was the quick, emphatic reply. "They seek to blend with
something they feel instinctively to be good for them, helpful to their
essential beings, encouraging to their best expression--their life."