until August and I'll be as sick as you like. Why, man, this is the
middle of June, and I'm due in Minneapolis now."

"Lie down, please," said the handsome young doctor, "and don't dare
remove this thermometer again until I tell you to. This can't be put
off until August. You're sick right now."

Mrs. McChesney shut her lips over the little glass tube, and watched
the young doctor's impassive face (it takes them no time to learn that
trick) and, woman-wise, jumped to her own conclusion.

"How sick?" she demanded, the thermometer read.

"Oh, it won't be so bad," said the very young doctor, with a
professionally cheerful smile.

Emma McChesney sat up in bed with a jerk. "You mean--sick! Not ill, or
grippy, or run down, but sick! Trained-nurse sick! Hospital sick!
Doctor-twice-a-day sick! Table-by-the-bedside-with-bottles-on-it
sick!"

"Well--a--" hesitated the doctor, and then took shelter behind a
bristling hedge of Latin phrases. Emma McChesney hurdled it at a leap.

"Never mind," she said. "I know." She looked at the faces of those
four strangers. Sympathy--real, human sympathy--was uppermost in each.
She smiled a faint and friendly little smile at the group. And at that
the housekeeper began tucking in the covers at the foot of the bed,
and the lank waitress walked to the window and pulled down the shade,
and the bell-boy muttered something about ice-water. The doctor patted