So Jane cut some bread and put on eggs to boil, and the red-haired
person told his story.

"You see," he explained, "although I appear to be a furnace man from
the waist up and an interne from the waist down, I am really the new
superintendent."

"I hope you'll do better than the last one," she said severely. "He
was always flirting with the nurses."

"I shall never flirt with the nurses," he promised, looking at her.
"Anyhow I shan't have any immediate chance. The other fellow left
last night and took with him everything portable except the
ambulance--nurses, staff, cooks. I wish to Heaven he'd taken the
patients! And he did more than that. He cut the telephone wires!"

"Well!" said Jane. "Are you going to stand for it?"

The red-haired man threw up his hands. "The village is with him," he
declared. "It's a factional fight--the village against the
fashionable summer colony on the hill. I cannot telephone from the
village--the telegraph operator is deaf when I speak to him; the
village milkman and grocer sent boys up this morning--look here."
He fished a scrap of paper from his pocket and read:

I will not supply the Valley Hospital with any fresh
meats, canned oysters and sausages, or do any plumbing
for the hospital until the reinstatement of Dr. Sheets.
T. CASHDOLLAR, Butcher.