"Here? By giving a big name to her complaint. None of them have seen her. She was carried in with a success———!" The Doctor threw up triumphant little hands.
"But the people at the other house?"
"They know nothing but that over here she has had an attack which it will be one of the fifty duties of mine I mentioned to you to make sufficiently remarkable. She was out of sorts this morning—this afternoon I was summoned. That call of Tony's at my house is the providence!"
But still Dennis questioned. "Hadn't she some fond nurse—some devoted dragon?"
"The great Gorham? Yes: she didn't want her to come; she was cruelly overborne. Well," the Doctor lucidly pursued, "I must face the great Gorham. I'm already keeping her at bay—doctors, you see, are so luckily despots! They're blessedly bullies. She'll be tough—but it's all tough!"
Dennis, pressing his hand to his head, began wearily to pace again: it was far too tough for him. But he suddenly dropped upon the sofa, all but audibly moaning, falling back in the despair that broke through his false pluck. His interlocutor
