“If it’s merely a prejudice in the abstract against my being an opera singer, I think she will overcome that.  Besides, Mr. Hambleton is neither an actor nor an opera singer; he isn’t ‘serving Satan.’”

“Well—­” the doctor hesitated, and then went on hastily with a great show of irritation, “Susan’s a little set in her views.  She disapproves of the way you came here; says you shouldn’t have been out in a boat with two men, and that it’s a judgment for sin, your being drowned, or next door to it.  I’m only saying this, my dear Miss Agatha, to explain to you why Susan—­”

But Agatha was enlightened at last, and roused sufficiently to cause two red spots, brighter than they had ever been in health, to burn on her cheeks.  She sat up very straight, facing Doctor Thayer’s worried gaze, and interrupted him in tones ringing with anger.

“Do you mean to tell me, Doctor Thayer, that your sister, the sister of my mother’s lifelong friend, sits in her house and imagines scandalous stories about me, when she knows nothing at all about the facts or about me?  That she thinks I was out in a boat alone with two men?  That she is mean enough to condemn me without knowing the first thing about this awful accident?  Oh, I have no words!” And Agatha covered her burning face with her hands, unable, by mere speech, to express her outraged feelings.  Doctor Thayer edged uneasily about Agatha’s couch, with a manner resembling that of a whipped dog.

“Why, my dear Miss Agatha, Susan will come round in time.  She’s not so bad, really.  She’ll come round in time, only just now we haven’t any time to spare.  Don’t feel so badly; Susan is too set in her views—­”

“‘Set!’” cried Agatha.  “She’s a horrid, un-Christian woman!”

“Oh, no,” remonstrated the doctor.  “Susan’s all right, when you once get used to her.  She’s a trifle old-fashioned in her views—­”

But Agatha was not listening to the doctor’s feeble justification of Susan.  She was thinking hard.

“Doctor Thayer,” she urged, “do you want that woman to come here to take care of Mr. Hambleton?  Isn’t there any one else in this whole countryside who can nurse a sick man?  Why, I can do it myself; or Mr. Van Camp, his cousin, could do it.  Why should you want her, of all people, when she feels so toward us?”

The moment his professional judgment came into question Doctor Thayer slipped out from the cloud of embarrassment which had engulfed him in his recent conversation, and assumed the authoritative voice that Agatha had first heard.

“My dear Miss Agatha Redmond, that is foolish talk.  You are half sick, even now; and it requires a strong person, with no nerves, to do what I desire done.  Mr. Van Camp may be his cousin, but the chances are that he wouldn’t know a bromide from a blister; and good nurses don’t grow on bushes in Ilion, nor in Charlesport, either.  There isn’t one to be had, so far as I know, and we can’t wait to send to Augusta or Portland.  The next few days, especially the next twenty-four hours, are critical.”