lady as intellectual as the Robert Browning poems suggested, or did
she mean simply to imply that she _wished_ she were? And did the
tom-boyish sling-shot fit by any possible chance with the dainty,
feminine scrap of domestic embroidery? And was the empty purse
supposed to be especially significant of an inordinate fondness for
phonograph music--or what?

Pondering, puzzling, fretting, fussing, he dozed off to sleep at last
before he even knew that it was almost morning. And when he finally
woke again he found the Doctor laughing at him because he lay holding
a scarlet slipper in his hand.




IV


The next night, very, very late, in a furious riot of wind and snow
and sleet, a clerk from the drug-store just around the corner appeared
with a perfectly huge hot-water bottle fairly sizzling and bubbling
with warmth and relief for aching rheumatic backs.

"Well, where in thunder--?" groaned Stanton out of his cold and pain
and misery.

"Search me!" said the drug clerk. "The order and the money for it came
in the last mail this evening. 'Kindly deliver largest-sized hot-water
bottle, boiling hot, to Mr. Carl Stanton,... 11.30 to-night.'"