last been
waked from heavy and well-earned sleep by persistent knocking at her
door. She had found Miss Goucher standing in the unheated, draughty
hall, bare-footed, in her nightgown, her cheeks flushed with mounting
fever while her teeth chattered with cold.

Like a sensible woman she had hurried her instantly back to bed, and
would have gone at once for a hot-water bottle, if Miss Goucher had not
insisted upon a hearing. Miss O'Neill was abjectly fond of Miss Goucher,
who had the rare gift of listening to voluble commonplace without
impatience--a form of sympathy so rare and so flattering to Miss
O'Neill's so often bruised self-esteem that she would gladly--had there
been any necessity--have carried Miss Goucher rent-free for the mere
spiritual solace of pouring out her not very romantic troubles to her.
She had taken, Susan felt, an almost voluptuous pleasure in this, her
one opportunity to do something for Miss Goucher. She had telephoned
Gertrude's apartment for her: "no matter if it is late! I won't have you
upset like this for nobody! They've got to answer!" And she had talked
with some man--"and I didn't like his tone, neither"--who had asked her
some rather odd questions, and had then told her Miss Blake was O. K.,
not to worry about Miss Blake; she'd had a fainting-spell and been put
to bed; she'd be all right in the morning; sure; well, he was the
doctor, he guessed he ought to know! "Queer kind of doctor for a lady,"
Miss O'Neill had opined; "he sounded more like a mick!" A shrewd guess,
for he was, no doubt, one of Conlon's trusties.

Miss Goucher had then insisted that she was going to dress and go up at
once to Susan, and had even begun her preparations in spite of every
protest, when she was seized with so stabbing a pain in her chest that
she could only collapse groaning on the bed and let Miss O'Neill
minister to her as best she might with water bottles and a mustard
plaster borrowed from Number Twelve....

By the time I had tardily remembered to telephone Miss Goucher it was
almost nine A. M., and it was Miss O'Neill who had answered the call,
receiving my assurances of Susan's well-being, and informing me in turn
that poor Miss Goucher was good and sick and no mistake, let alone
worrying, and should she send for a doctor? She was a Scientist herself,
though she'd tried a mustard plaster, anyway, always liking to be on the
safe side; but Miss Goucher wasn't, and so maybe she ought. At this
point I