“Have you seen Sister Susan?” he inquired, stopping by the side of Agatha’s couch and looking down on her with his shrewd gaze.  It was a needless question, for he knew that Agatha had not seen Mrs. Stoddard.  She had been too weak and ill to see anybody.  Agatha shook her head.

“Well, Miss Agatha Redmond, Susan’s the nurse we need for that young gentleman over there.  It’s constant care he must have now, day and night; and if he gets well, it will be good nursing that does it.  There isn’t a nurse in this country like Susan, when she once takes hold of a case.  That Mr. Hand in there is all right, but he can’t sit up much longer night and day, as he has been doing.  And he isn’t a woman.  Don’t know why it is, but the Lord seems bent on throwing sick men into women’s hands—­as if they weren’t more than a match for us when we’re well!”

Agatha’s humorous smile rewarded the doctor’s grim comments, if that was what he wanted.

“No, Doctor,” she said, with a fleeting touch of her old lightness, “we’re never a match for you.  We may entertain you or nurse you or feed you, or possibly once in a century or two inspire you; but we’re never a match for you.”

“For which Heaven be praised!” ejaculated the doctor fervently.

Agatha watched him as he fumbled nervously about the room or clasped his hands behind him under his long coat-tails.  The greenish-black frock-coat hung untidily upon him, and his white fringe of hair was anything but smooth.  She perceived that something other than medical problems troubled him.

“Would your sister—­would Mrs. Stoddard—­be willing to come here to take care of Mr. Hambleton?” she ventured.

“Ask me that,” snapped the doctor, “when no man on earth could tell whether she’ll come or not.  She says she won’t.  She’s hurt and she’s outraged; or at least she thinks she is.  But if you could get her to think that it was her duty to take care of that poor boy in there, she’d come fast enough.”

Agatha was puzzled.  She felt as if there were a dozen ways to turn and only one way that would lead her aright; and she could not find the clue to that one right way.  At last she attacked the doctor boldly.

“Tell me, Doctor Thayer,” she said earnestly, “just what it is that causes Mrs. Stoddard to feel hurt and outraged.  Is it simply because I have inherited the money and the house?  She can not possibly know anything about me personally.”

The old doctor thrust his under jaw out more belligerently than ever, while turning his answer over in his mind.  He took two lengths of the room before stopping again by Agatha’s side and looking down on her.

“She says it isn’t the money, but that it’s the slight Hercules put upon her for leaving the place, our old home, out of the family.  That’s one thing; but that isn’t the worst.  Susan’s orthodox, you know, very orthodox; and she has a prejudice against your profession—­serving Satan, she calls it.  She thinks that’s what actresses and opera singers do, though how she knows anything about it, I don’t see.”  The grim smile shone in the doctor’s eyes even while he looked, half anxiously, to see how Agatha was taking his explanation of Mrs. Stoddard’s attitude.  Agatha meditated a moment.