"Call the doctor!" she said sharply, and I thought it was all over....
But it was the turn, and after that by hair's breadths and hair's breadths they pulled him over.
"Now he knows, Jerry," Margarita said to me, and went to bed herself.
It was a good week after that, when the doctor had gone and we were all breathing naturally again, that Harriet asked me abruptly if I had noticed Mrs. Bradley's voice. I said yes, that it was still decidedly husky. She looked at me so sadly, so strangely, that my nerves fairly jumped—we had all been on edge for a month—and I commanded her rather sharply to say what she meant and be done with it.
"Is her voice injured?"
"I am afraid so, yes," she said gently.
"But surely time and rest and proper treatment," I began, but she shook her head.
"The doctor examined her throat before he left," she said. "Of course he had no laryngoscope with him, but he didn't need one, really. The vocal cords are all stretched—he said the specialists might help her and take away a great deal of the hoarseness, but that in his opinion she can never stand the strain of public singing again: he thinks excitement alone would paralyse the cords."
"Who's to tell her?" I said quietly.
You see, we'd all been stretched so taut that we couldn't use any more energy in exclamations or regrets.