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."

Agatha listened intently, and a growing resolution shone in her eyes.

"Would Mrs. Stoddard come, if i