The lamp was alight and the steam coming, when the doctor came out, looking rather spectral in a white gown.
"Thank goodness!" I exclaimed, dropping some pulverized bean on the floor. "So it is all over!"
"Not yet," he informed me, smiling, "but so far everything goes well. The big, fat Providence in gig-lamps is sitting by the patient. Sometimes three make poor company. The solid dame came in and called her 'my dear' and rummaged things out of the trunk and fixed up the bed, and tears began to flow. It must be a wonderful thing for a woman, who feels abandoned of God and man, to have such a big brave creature come in to pound the pillows and make one feel that there is yet corn in Egypt. I left them with their heads together. The poor thing was crying a bit and beginning to tell the story of her past life. Yes, thanks! I'll be glad of a cup, with three lumps of sugar. Great little machine, that! And so I thought I'd walk in here for a minute. Some things a woman tells another must be pretty sacred, don't you think?"
I poured out the coffee appreciatively.
"The person whom you call the solid dame," I told him, "is no less a woman than Frieda Long, the poet in pigments."
"Keeps a Beauty Shop?" he inquired.
"If you mean to ask whether she shampoos and manicures females and supplies them with hair," I answered, "your guess is utterly wrong. She paints women, and men too, on canvas, and any ordinary individual, such as you and I, ought to grovel before her."
"Just say the word," he answered, "and I'll make a start. She's the best old girl I've come across in many a long day."
"Frieda Long is hardly thirty-eight," I told him, "and, to change the subject for a moment, I will acknowledge that I deemed such cases best attended by the sere and ancient. I rang you up because your sign suggested long experience."
"Not half bad, is it?" he replied. "I aged it by setting it up in the backyard and firing brickbats at it. Old Cummerly, next door to me, had his replated."