And when at last the day came for getting ready to return home he hung around the little apartment sitting on things they wished to pack and getting in the way of suit-cases and bags that needed to be moved, seeming quite to forget that he was a famous surgeon and that people were waiting patiently for him to wield his knife.
"If anybody urged me particularly I think I'd take a day off and go home with you. Your father may need attention when he gets there, and I need a vacation, and I could come back on the night train. But nobody thinks of inviting me, of course."
"Please come," said Doris promptly.
"I won't invite you," said MacCammon pointedly. "The girls think you are responsible for saving their father's eyes—though anybody else could have done it just as well—and when you are around nobody pays any attention to me at all. So I think you'd better stay in Chicago, where you belong."
"There you are—isn't that gratitude for you?"
"Don't mind him," said Doris. "I am the General. Do as I say."
He looked hopefully at Rosalie.
"They sit in the front seat and entertain themselves," she said, "and never bother about me alone in the rear. I invite you to come and sit with me, and let's not say a word to them all the way home."
He accepted that invitation immediately and rushed off to make arrangements to keep his patients alive until his return.
Zee had insisted most strongly that the whole family should arrive home at the same identical minute, and not come stringing in all day, keeping them upset, and MacCammon, with his usual loyalty to her, said flatly it must be done.