"
"To my great edification!" Ransom exclaimed. "And I hope Doctor Prance
is well."
"She looks after every one's health but her own," said Miss Birdseye,
smiling. "When I tell her that, she says she hasn't got any to look
after. She says she's the only woman in Boston that hasn't got a doctor.
She was determined she wouldn't be a patient, and it seemed as if the
only way not to be one was to be a doctor. She is trying to make me
sleep; that's her principal occupation."
"Is it possible you don't sleep yet?" Ransom asked, almost tenderly.
"Well, just a little. But by the time I get to sleep I have to get up. I
can't sleep when I want to live."
"You ought to come down South," the young man suggested. "In that
languid air you would doze deliciously!"
"Well, I don't want to be languid," said Miss Birdseye. "Besides, I have
been down South, in the old times, and I can't say they let me sleep
very much; they were always round after me!"
"Do you mean on account of the negroes?"
"Yes, I couldn't think of anything else then. I carried them the Bible."
Ransom was silent a moment; then he said, in a tone which evidently was
carefully considerate, "I should like to hear all about that!"
"Well, fortunately, we are not required now; we are required for
something else.
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