“Very well, then!” cried Mrs. Maynard, “I won’t be given up.  I will simply die!  Not a pill, not a powder, of his will I touch!  If he thinks himself too good to consult with another doctor, and a lady at that, merely because she doesn’t happen to be allopathist, he can go along!  I never heard of anything so conceited, so disgustingly mean, in my life.  No, Grace!  Why, it’s horrid!” She was silent, and then, “Why, of course,” she added, “if he comes, I shall have to see him.  I look like a fright, I suppose.”

“I will do your hair,” said Grace, with indifference to these vows and protests; and without deigning further explanation or argument she made the invalid’s toilet for her.  If given time, Mrs. Maynard would talk herself into any necessary frame of mind, and Grace merely supplied the monosyllabic promptings requisite for her transition from mood to mood.  It was her final resolution that when Dr. Mulbridge did come she should give him a piece of her mind; and she received him with anxious submissiveness, and hung upon all his looks and words with quaking and with an inclination to attribute her unfavorable symptoms to the treatment of her former physician.  She did not spare him certain apologies for the disorderly appearance of her person and her room.

Grace sat by and watched him with perfectly quiescent observance.  The large, somewhat uncouth man gave evidence to her intelligence that he was all physician—­that he had not chosen his profession from any theory or motive, however good, but had been as much chosen by it as if he had been born a Physician.  He was incredibly gentle and soft in all his movements, and perfectly kind, without being at any moment unprofitably sympathetic.  He knew when to listen and when not to listen,—­to learn everything from the quivering bundle of nerves before him without seeming to have learnt anything alarming; he smiled when it would do her good to be laughed at, and treated her with such grave respect that she could not feel herself trifled with, nor remember afterwards any point of neglect.  When he rose and left some medicines, with directions to Grace for giving them and instructions for contingencies, she followed him from the room.

“Well?” she said anxiously.

“Mrs. Maynard is threatened with pneumonia.  Or, I don’t know why I should say threatened,” he added; “she has pneumonia.”

“I supposed—­I was afraid so,” faltered the girl.

“Yes.”  He looked into her eyes with even more seriousness than he spoke.

“Has she friends here?” he asked.

“No; her husband is in Cheyenne, out on the plains.”

“He ought to know,” said Dr. Mulbridge.  “A great deal will depend upon her nursing—­Miss—­ah—­Dr. Breen.”

“You need n’t call me Dr. Breen,” said Grace.  “At present, I am Mrs. Maynard’s nurse.”

He ignored this as he had ignored every point connected with the interview of the morning.  He repeated the directions he had already given with still greater distinctness, and, saying that he should come in the morning, drove away.  She went back to Louise:  inquisition for inquisition, it was easier to meet that of her late patient than that of her mother, and for once the girl spared herself.