“Daddy, if you dare to do such a thing!”
“Why not? After all, I rather liked Barth.”
“I didn’t.”
“But surely you thought he was a gentleman,” the doctor urged.
“After a fashion,” Nancy admitted guardedly. “Still, now that I have met him, I’d rather let bygones be bygones. It would be maddening, for instance, just when I was sailing past him on my way in to supper, to have him remember how I used to coil strips of red flannel around his aristocratic ankle. No; we’ll let the dead past bury its bandages and water them with its liniment, daddy. If I am ever to know Mr. Cecil Barth now, it must be as a new acquaintance from London, not as my old patient from Sainte Anne-de-Beaupré.”
“And yet,” the doctor still spoke meditatively; “Barth appreciated you, Nancy, and he was certainly grateful.”
The girl laughed wilfully.
“He appreciated his hired nurse, daddy, and he was grateful to me to the extent of paying me my wages. By the way, I’d like that money.”
“For what?”
“I would drop it into the lap of the Good Sainte Anne. It is no small miracle to have delivered a British Lion into the hands of an American and allowed her to minister to his wounded paw. It was a great experience, daddy, and, now I think of it, I would like to reward the saint according to her merits.”