“No,” Nancy answered in flat negation.
“You nursed me.”
“After a fashion.”
“What for?”
Again Nancy’s impatience gave place to mirth.
“To cure you, of course.”
“Rather! But I didn’t mean that. We all know it, in fact; and you did it awfully well. But what made you—er—pick me out in the first place?”
“Pick you out?” This time, Nancy was the one to show perplexity.
“Yes. How did you happen to choose me for a patient?”
Nancy gasped at the new phase of the situation opened by Barth’s words. In his British ignorance of American customs, did he think that she habitually wandered about the country, selecting attractive strangers to be the objects of her feminine ministrations?