"Patching--I'm patching!" she laughed to herself. "And here I've been hiring my own mending done! Theodosia Baxter, see what you are doing; you are patching a shirt for a man! No, I'm not, either! I'm doing it for Stefana--what are you talking about?"
Some one came up her steps and knocked on her open door. But she was too engrossed to hear. The patch underneath had slipped a little askew. She ripped out some of the stitches and began again. She caught herself humming as she worked.
"Please may I have my shirt?" a voice asked meekly. "That story is promised for next month. It's the twenty-eighth, now."
Evangeline's Tract Man stood in the doorway, soft felt hat in hand, twinkles in his eyes. Evangeline's Tract Man was the Reformed Doctor! If Miss Theodosia had been eighteen instead of thirty-six she would not have blushed more beautifully, but she continued to patch. She was caught in the act; no help for it now. But she would finish--that--patch.
"So it's you! So that's the work Reformed Doctors do!"
"Madam, yes. When stories appeal to them more than pills and tonics, they reform and write stories. They have to!" he cried, suddenly in earnest, "When one is life, and the other death--"
"Oh, if it was death to them--your patients," she murmured. Then, ashamed of her own flippancy: "Of course, I didn't mean anything as silly as that! I meant--I meant, please sit down while I finish this patch. There, in that easy-chair. There are magazines on the table."
There was one magazine with his own name in the list of contents. He opened it at that page and gazed down upon it quite soberly.
"My name is John Bradford," he said, as if reading. Miss Theodosia started a little, but it was not as he thought, in his innocent vanity. Miss Theodosia got no farther than the first part of the name--so he was a John! She glanced quickly at the doorway, measuring him in her mind as he had stood against the lintel. He had reached a long way up--a long man. The Shadow Man had been a long shadow. Something told her--
[Illustration: "If you are thinking of putting me anywhere, put me into a story like that."]
"Did you ever carry a child in your arms and lay her on a bed? In the middle of the night? Did you do it last night? Are you the same man?"