There was a brief silence, during which the girls plied their needles.

“Are you going to stay in this hotel?” demanded Patsy, in her blunt way.

“For a time, I think.  It is very pleasant here,” he said.

“Have you had breakfast?”

“I took a food-tablet at daybreak.”

“Huh!” A scornful exclamation.  Then she glanced at the open door of the dining-hall and laying aside her work she rose with a determined air and said: 

“Come with me!”

“Where?”

For answer she assisted him to rise.  Then she took his hand and marched him across the lobby to the dining room.

He seemed astonished at this proceeding but made no resistance.  Seated at a small table she called a waitress and said: 

“Bring a cup of chocolate, a soft-boiled egg and some toast.”

“Pardon me, Miss Doyle,” he said; “I thought you had breakfasted.”

“So I have,” she replied.  “The breakfast I’ve ordered is for you, and you’re going to eat it if I have to ram it down your throat.”

“But—­Miss Doyle!”

“You’ve told us you are doomed.  Well, you’re going to die with a full stomach.”

“But the doctor—­”

“Bother the doctor!  I’m your doctor, now, and I won’t send in a bill, thank your stars.”

He looked at her with his sad little smile.

“Isn’t this a rather high-handed proceeding, Miss Doyle?”

“Perhaps.”

“I haven’t employed you as my physician, you know.”

“True.  But you’ve deliberately put yourself in my power.”

“How?”

“In the first place, you tagged us here to this hotel.”

“You don’t mind, do you?”

“Not in the least.  It’s a public hostelry.  In the second place, you confided to us your disease and your treatment of it—­which was really none of our business.”

“I—­I was wrong to do that.  But you led me on and—­I’m so lonely—­and you all seemed so generous and sympathetic—­that I—­I—­”

“That you unwittingly posted us concerning your real trouble.  Do you realize what it is?  You’re a hypo—­hypo—­what do they call it?—­hypochondriac!”

“I am not!”

“And your doctor—­your famous specialist—­is a fool.”

“Oh, Miss Doyle!”

“Also you are a—­a chump, to follow his fool advice.  You don’t need sympathy, Mr. A. Jones.  What you need is a slapstick.”

“A—­a—­”

“A slapstick.  And that’s what you’re going to get if you don’t obey orders.”

Here the maid set down the breakfast, ranging the dishes invitingly before the invalid.  His face had expressed all the emotions from amazement to terror during Patsy’s tirade and now he gazed from her firm, determined features to the eggs and toast, in an uncertain, helpless way that caused the girl a severe effort to curb a burst of laughter.

“Now, then,” she said, “get busy.  I’ll fix your egg.  Do you want more sugar in your chocolate?  Taste it and see.  And if you don’t butter that toast before it gets cold it won’t be fit to eat.”