"And Leah's mother was your nurse, too, wasn't she?"
"Yes, but Leah presumes on that and thinks that she can do anything she wants. Doctor Copin doesn't like her, either. He's got another girl he wants me to engage."
I couldn't help exclaiming, "Oh, I hope you won't!"
"Well, perhaps I won't, if you don't want me to, Chet. I was going to ask your advice about it. It'll make the doctor furious, but I don't mind. Poor Doctor Copin! I'm sorry for him, though. He's awfully hard up."
"Why! Is he so poor?" I smelled a mouse.
"He's all the time complaining to me, at any rate."
"I should think you'd be afraid to keep much money in the house. It's such a lonely place for burglars, you know."
"Oh, I don't keep much on hand. But I always have a little. I have a small income. It comes down every month. It's rents or stocks or something. It's safely invested and I don't bother about it."
It struck me that she took all this rather easily, but I soon found that it was the way she took everything. It had always been that way with her, and she saw nothing strange in it. Her amnesia accounted for everything. I saw how easily she might be led. Impressionable, and with a hasty, wilful temper, one who knew her temperament could soon learn to control her. I began to see how Leah's influence, which had heretofore been potent, might, perhaps, be undermined by the doctor. Here was the next thing to be investigated. But I would have to wait till I had had a talk with him.
She plucked a dandelion and put it into my buttonhole, looking up at me coquettishly as she did so.