So, while the whole town was ringing with the fame of his successful legal _début_, he sat moodily in his office, a prey to troubled and half-regretful thought, until Sleep, so long defrauded of her rights, stole upon him in his chair, and held him fast prisoned in her soft embrace.
"I don't beg pardon for disturbing you," said Doctor Remy, giving the sleeper a vigorous shake. "You are in as fair a way to catch your death of cold, a your worst enemy could wish you to be."
Bergan slowly opened his eyes and stared vacantly around him. The doctor's words, though they had reached his ears, had not penetrated to his understanding. As yet, he was but half cognizant of his whereabouts, not at all of his circumstances.
"Come, up with you!" persisted the doctor, "and take a turn round the room, to get the chill out of your Mood. Man alive! what were you thinking of, to go to sleep before that window, with such a damp wind blowing in?"
"I did not mean to," responded Bergan, drowsily. And his eyes closed again.
"Did not mean to!" repeated Doctor Remy, in a tone of ineffable contempt. "You might at least have vouchsafed me a newer excuse: that is worn threadbare. It has served the whole human race, from Eve over her apple, down to Cathie over her last broken doll. Nobody 'means' to do anything. Except me--I 'mean' to wake you up." And the doctor gave Bergan another uncompromising shake.
"It is so good to sleep!" remonstrated the young man, in the same drowsy tone.
"It is so good to have the rheumatism, or that cream of delights known hereabout as the broken-bone fever!" returned the doctor, with cool irony. "However," he added, indifferently, turning away, "_chacun à son goût_."
"You surely do not mean to leave him, in that way, Doctor," said a rebuking voice, beneath the window. Miss Lyte, fastening up a rosebush, in the dusk outside, had heard the whole.
"Certainly not, if it pleases you to wish otherwise," replied the doctor, gallantly.
And returning to the charge, Doctor Remy did not remit his efforts until he had gotten the half-vexed young man upon his feet, and forced him to pace two or three times up and down the office. Thereupon Bergan was fain to avow that his limbs were stiff and sore, and he had no mind for further exercise.