“I see Miss Levice here; don’t come down,” Kemp was saying. “What further directions I have must be given to a woman.”
“Stay with Mamma, Father,” called Ruth, looking up at her hesitating father; “I shall see the doctor out;” and she quickly ran down the few remaining steps to Kemp, awaiting her at the foot. She opened the door of the library, and closing it quickly behind them, turned to him expectantly.
“Nothing to be alarmed at,” he said, answering her mute inquiry. He seated himself at the table, and drew from his vest-pocket pencil and blank. Without another glance at the girl, he wrote rapidly for some minutes; then quickly moving back his chair, he arose and handed her the two slips of paper.
“The first is a tonic which you will have made up,” he explained, picking up his gloves and hat and moving toward the door; “the other is a diet which you are to observe. As I told her just now, she must remain in bed and see no one but her immediate family; you must see that she hears and reads nothing exciting. That is all, I think.”
Indignation and alarm held riot in Ruth’s face and arrested the doctor’s departure.
“Dr. Kemp,” she said, “you force me to remind you of a promise you made me last night. Will you at least tell me what ails my mother that you use such strenuous measures?”
A flash of recollection came to the doctor’s eyes.
“Why, this is an unpardonable breach upon my part, Miss Levice; but I will tell you all the trouble. Your mother is suffering with a certain form of hysteria to a degree that would have prostrated her had we not come forward in time. As it is, by prostrating her ourselves for awhile, say a month or so, she will regain her equilibrium. You have heard of the food and rest cure?”
“Yes.”
“Well, that is what she will undergo mildly. Has she any duties that will suffer by her neglect or that will intrude upon her equanimity?”