"How about that, Miss Conover?" Claybourne asked. Miss Conover looked at me, and I suspected revenge to be brooding in her eye. Helen added her entreaty, and the nurse wavered.
"I suppose there'll be less trouble in the end if we carry him down, though what Dr. Sinclair will say, goodness knows," Miss Conover conceded grudgingly. "But it'll only be for an hour, and then no more talk or visitors today."
"Agreed," I cried; "any price you say, nurse."
"Miss Conover," she corrected.
"I beg your pardon—good nature made me careless." Helen giggled. I was rolled up in dressing gown and blankets and carried downstairs by Mr. Claybourne, Helen and Miss Conover followed with pillows and miscellaneous glassware. Leonidas took a sniff at me and then greeted me with the most exuberant enthusiasm, knocking over at least one piece of furniture by the sheer power in his wagging tail. I had an armchair before a fire of crackling hickory logs; there was a small table beside me, with some of Helen's violets in a little vase in the centre.
Helen, her father, and Miss Conover sat at their gaily decked table, on which was a mountain of autumn fruit piled about an enormous pumpkin. The maid brought in a turkey as big as a boar's head. Mr. Claybourne busied himself with opening a bottle of champagne. Helen insisted that the turkey be placed before me and helped me carve the first slice before it was removed to Mr. Claybourne's seat.
"Isn't it a shame you can't eat any of it," Helen cried. Just then I did not care to. To tell the truth, the smell of the food made me feel so ill I was not certain I could stick the dinner out. But I knew better than to give Miss Conover an inkling of this. "It isn't as if one could make a dash for the upper deck, either," I thought to myself. At a critical moment the nurse placed some jellied bouillon before me and threatened forcible feeding. "One inch nearer with a spoonful of that stuff, and there'll be a real catastrophe," I murmured inwardly. I violently waved it away. Helen flew to my rescue. "I think if we leave Ted quite alone, he'll eat it by himself when he feels like it," she advised Miss Conover.
"The doctor ordered him to eat it," the nurse stubbornly contended. Helen conquered her, and I was left, not exactly at peace, but in a state of armed neutrality within. By concentrating my attention on the dancing flames in the chimney I kept the internal factions quiet.
Mr. Claybourne ran through his series of champagne toasts, repeating all the funny ones we had heard last time. He was eager for me to have one sip, but Helen stood firm. Miss Conover sat in stern disapproval of the champagne, her glass inverted before her, as if to emphasize with a kind of crystal exclamation point her opinion of such proceedings.
"Where is Miss Hershey?" I asked, as soon as I had the stomach for such a question.