“I am sorry to say that is all I know how to do for you, Miss Vernor.”

“Then I will go back to Miss Lydia.  By the way, would you recommend soap also for hysterics?”

“Applied with a close bandage over the mouth?  Certainly, it will be both effectual and immediate.”

“Thank you.  Good-night.”

“Will you not shake hands with me?”

Gerald turned as she was moving off and held out her hand, more as a queen might have extended it in motion of dismissal than as friend to friend.  Denham took it between both his.  “Before you go, I want to thank you in the name of all Miss Phebe’s friends,” he said, earnestly.  “You have saved her life to-night, and at the risk of your own.”

“The table-cloth was her savior, not I,” returned Gerald, lightly, but with a softened voice.  “And anyway, is it not quite thanks enough only to know that Phebe is safe?  Now good-night in earnest.”

CHAPTER IX.

JOPPA’S MINISTRATIONS TO THE SICK.

All news, good, bad, and indifferent, flies equally fast in Joppa; and had there been a town-crier deputed for the purpose, Phebe’s accident could not have sooner become a household tale in even the most distant districts of the place.  After a contradiction of the first rumor, reporting her burned to a crisp and only recognizable by a ring of her mother’s on her left hand,—­which ring by-the-way she never wore,—­and after a contradiction in due course of the second rumor, reporting Gerald to be lying in the agonies of death and Phebe to have escaped without a hair singed, followed a period of dire uncertainty, when nobody knew what to believe, and felt only an obstinate conviction that everybody else had got it entirely wrong.  But at last the story straightened itself out into something bearing a family resemblance to actual facts, and then Joppa settled itself resolutely down to doing its duty.  My duty toward my sick neighbor in Joppa consists in calling twice a day, if not oftener, at his house; in inquiring after his condition down to minutest and most sacred details; in knowing accurately how many hours he slept last night, and what he ate for breakfast, and what is paid the sick-nurse, and if it includes her washing.  My second duty toward my sick neighbor is to bring him something to eat, on the supposition that “outside things taste differently;” or something to look at; or, if nothing better, at least something to refuse.  My third and last duty toward my neighbor,—­the well neighbor who possesses the sick one,—­is to narrate every somewhat similar case on record, with all its circumstances and the ultimate career of the sufferer; to prescribe remedies as infallible as the Pope; to disapprove wholly, and on the best grounds, of those in actual use; to offer every assistance in and out of my power; and to say at leaving that I hope it may all turn out well, but that I should