s 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.

"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,