The Young Doctor attributed these lines mostly to anxiety and inward suffering, but Kitty set them down as the outward signs of an inward fretfulness and quarrelsomeness, which was rendered all the more offensive in her eyes by the fact that Mona Crozier was the most, spotless thing she had ever seen, at the end of a journey—and this, a journey across a continent. Orderliness and prim exactness, taste and fastidiousness, tireless tidiness were seen in every turn, in every fold of her dress, in the way everything she wore had been put on, in the decision of every step and gesture. Kitty noticed all this, and she said to herself,
“Wound up like a watch, cut like a cameo,” and she instinctively felt the little dainty cameo-brooch at her own throat, the only jewellery she ever wore, or had ever worn.
“Sensible of her not to bring a maid,” commented the Young Doctor inwardly. “That would have thrown Kitty into a fit. Yet how she manages to look like this after six thousand miles of sea and land going is beyond me—and Crozier so rather careless in his ways. Not what you would call two notes in the same key, she and Crozier,” he reflected as he told her she need not trouble about her luggage, and took charge of the checks for it.
“My husband—is—is he quite better now?” Mrs. Crozier asked with sharp anxiety, as the two-seated “rig” started away with the ladies in the back seat.
“Oh, better, thanks to him,” was Kitty’s reply, nodding towards the Young Doctor.
“You have told him I was coming?”
“Wasn’t it better to have a talk with you first?” asked Kitty meaningly.
Mrs. Crozier almost nervously twitched the little jet bag she carried, then she looked Kitty in the eyes.
“You will, of course, have reason for thinking so, if you say it,” was her enigmatical reply. “And of course you will tell me. You did not let him know that you had written to me, or that the doctor had cabled me?”
“Oh, you got his cable?” questioned Kitty with a little ring of triumph in her voice, meant to reach the ears of the Young Doctor. It did reach him, and he replied to the question.