The lady said all this in Ingigerd's room, intentionally refraining from lowering her voice. Several times Frederick and Willy interrupted to ask her to moderate her tones.
"Miss Hahlström will not dance at all," said Frederick, finally.
"Indeed?" said the agent. "Then she'll be involved in a very unpleasant law suit."
"Miss Hahlström is a minor," said Frederick, "and her father, with whom you concluded the contract, probably lost his life in the sinking of the Roland."
"And I," said the agent, "don't want to lose a thousand dollars for nothing."
"Miss Hahlström is sick."
"Very well, then I'll send my physician."
"I myself am a physician."
"A German physician, I suppose," she said. "The only physicians that count for us are Americans."
Perhaps this American woman, equipped with a masculine intellect, masculine energy, and a masculine voice would have put through her will, had not Ingigerd's heavy sleep defied all the noise about her, even the shaking to which she had been subjected. At length Frederick displayed a degree of determination so unambiguous that the agent had to recede from her position and temporarily withdraw from the field. Besides, Willy hit upon an idea, the far-reaching significance of which Frederick did not realise until later. He declared that if the agent did not desist, he would notify the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, since Miss Hahlström was not yet seventeen years old.