"I have given up the case to him," said Grace wearily.

"Very well, then!" cried Mrs. Maynard, "I won't be given up. I will
simply die! Not a pill, not a powder, of his will I touch! If he thinks
himself too good to consult with another doctor, and a lady at that,
merely because she doesn't happen to be allopathist, he can go along! I
never heard of anything so conceited, so disgustingly mean, in my life.
No, Grace! Why, it's horrid!" She was silent, and then, "Why, of course,"
she added, "if he comes, I shall have to see him. I look like a fright, I
suppose."

"I will do your hair," said Grace, with indifference to these vows and
protests; and without deigning further explanation or argument she made
the invalid's toilet for her. If given time, Mrs. Maynard would talk
herself into any necessary frame of mind, and Grace merely supplied the
monosyllabic promptings requisite for her transition from mood to mood.
It was her final resolution that when Dr. Mulbridge did come she should
give him a piece of her mind; and she received him with anxious
submissiveness, and hung upon all his looks and words with quaking and
with an inclination to attribute her unfavorable symptoms to the
treatment of her former physician. She did not spare him certain
apologies for the disorderly appearance of her person and her room.

Grace sat by and watched him with perfectly quiescent observance. The
large, somewhat uncouth man gave evidence to her intelligence that he was
all physician--that he had not chosen his profession from any theory or
motive, however good, but had been as much chosen by it as if he had been
born a Physician. He was incredibly gentle and soft in all his movements,
and perfectly kind, without being at any moment unprofitably sympathetic.