He pursed his lips judicially and looked away from me for a full minute, as though he would escape answering; then his eyes came back and I saw that he was going to tell.
“I reckoned you’d be asking that question,” he said.
“The morning that you figured to sail, you were taken sick at the Misses Januaries’. You were mighty bad when they sent for me; you had pneumonia and a touch of brain-fever. It’s a close call you’ve had. I found you wandering in your head—and saying things.”
“Things, doctor? Things that I wouldn’t want heard?”
He nodded gravely. “No one in Sheba knew anything about you. I saw that you were in for a long spell, and that the Misses Januaries’ was no place for you to get proper nursing.”
He halted awkwardly. “Then I came to Randall and told him.”
“Had I mentioned him in my delirium?”
“You’d mentioned her.”
I could feel the warm flush of color spreading through my body and turned away my head. The old doctor gripped my hand. “That’s how it happened, I guess.” Little by little he told me about Randall Carpenter. During the first days of crisis he had scarcely gone to bed, but had paced the house, always returning to my bedroom door to see if he could be of any service.
“But, why should he care?” I questioned.