She was very humble.  In the sweetness of her relief, of her security, she would have submitted cheerfully not only to slang, but to downright profanity.  It was one of those unforgettable instants when character, she understood, was more effective than culture.  Even Arthur would have appeared at a disadvantage beside O’Hara at that moment.

“I think I ought to help you,” she insisted.

“Well, I think you oughtn’t.  Out you go!  I guess I know what I’m up against.”

Before she could protest, before she could even resist, he had pushed her out into the hail, and while she still hesitated there at the head of the staircase, the door opened far enough to allow the huddled figure of Miss Polly to creep through the crack.  Then the key turned in the lock; and O’Hara’s voice was heard pacifying George as he might have pacified a child or a lunatic.  After a few minutes the shrieks stopped suddenly; the door was unlocked again for a minute, and there floated out the reassuring words: 

“Don’t stand out there any longer.  It’s as right as right.  I’ve got him buffaloed!”

“What does he mean?” inquired Gabriella helplessly of the seamstress.

“I don’t know, but I reckon it’s all right,” responded Miss Polly.  “He seems to know just what to do, and anyhow the doctor’ll be here in a minute.  It seems funny to give him whiskey, don’t it, but that was the first thing Mr. O’Hara thought of.”

“I suppose his heart was weak.  He looked as if he were dying,” answered Gabriella.  “He asked for more whiskey, didn’t he?”

“Yes; I’m goin’ right straight to get it.  Oh, Gabriella, ain’t a man a real solid comfort sometimes?”

Without replying to this ejaculation, Gabriella went after the whiskey, and when she came back with the bottle in her hand, she found the doctor on the landing outside the locked door.  He was a stranger to her, and she had scarcely begun her explanation when O’Hara called him into the room.

“The sooner you take a look at him the better.”  Everything was taken out of her hands—­everything, even her explanation of George’s presence in her apartment.

As there was nothing more for her to do, she went back to the sitting-room, where a fire burned brightly, and began to talk to Miss Polly.

“I don’t know what I should have done if he hadn’t been here,” she said.

“Who?  Mr. O’Hara?  Well, it certainly was providential, honey, when you come to think of it.”

The door of Archibald’s room opened and shut, and the doctor came down the hall to the telephone.  They heard him order medicines from a chemist near-by; and then, after a minute, he took up the receiver, and spoke to a nurse at the hospital.  At first he gave merely the ordinary directions, but at the end of the conversation he said sharply in answer to a question:  “No, there’s no need of a restraining sheet.  He’s too far gone to be violent.  It is only a matter of hours.”