As quickly and silently as he did everything else, the young man went
down-stairs, and the piano stopped, but only for a moment, as he
requested her, with an airy wave of the hand, not to mind him. When she
finished the old song she was playing, he called her by name, introduced
himself, and invited her out into the garden, because, as he said,
"walls not only have ears, but telephones."

"Say," he began, by way of graceful preliminary, "you look to me as
though you had sense."

"Thank you," she replied, demurely.

"Sense," he resumed, "is lamentably scarce, especially the variety
misnamed common--or even horse. I'm no mental healer, nor anything of
that sort, you know, but it's reasonable to suppose that if the mind can
control the body, after a fashion, when the body is well, it's entitled
to some show when the body isn't well, don't you think so?"

Rose assented, though she did not quite grasp what he said. His all
pervading breeziness affected her much as it had Allison.

"Now," he continued, "I'm not unprofessional enough to knock anybody,
but I gather that there's been a procession of undertakers down here
making that poor chap upstairs think there's no chance. I'm not saying
that there is, but there's no reason why we shouldn't trot along until
we have to stop. It isn't necessary to amputate just yet, and until it
is necessary, there's nothing to hinder us from working like the devil
to save him from it, is there?"