It was interesting, but I didn’t believe it--then.
“Ted,” Mrs. Crane had said (Doctor Crane’s first name is Theodore), “I want to give Natalie Page that bracelet, but--you know poor Nelly’s foolish fear of it bothers me.”
“Nonsense!” Doctor Crane answered, and Mary Elinor said she knew he was smoking, by the tight way he spoke.
“I suppose it is,” Mrs. Crane said, “isn’t it?”
“Why, of course it is. . . . Nothing the matter with that bracelet. My dear, how could it affect anything? . . . And as for poor Carter Page’s pneumonia” (Carter Page was my father, and he was an Admiral in the Navy), “he went off with that because of a severe climatic change, a bad sailing, and a weak heart. And of course Nelly was upset both physically and mentally by that.”
“But before,” said Mrs. Crane. “You know her little sister--the one who was killed in that Carrol County Hunt--thrown from a horse--well, she’d borrowed this bracelet and wore it that day.”
“My dear,” said Doctor Crane, “that’s simply coincidence. And it certainly proves nothing. . . . I think Nelly’s daughter ought to have it, because of its historic value, and I wouldn’t be bothered for a second by those imaginings.”
Then Mary Elinor heard him scratch a match and relight his pipe. She said that it was really interesting the way she could tell what was going on without seeing it. It was like movies for the blind.
“Suppose,” said Mrs. Crane, “there is something in that sort of thing (although, of course, there isn’t) and I did give this child something that would----”
Then Doctor Crane asked if she needed a tonic, which is his way of saying that people are cross, or crazy, or nervous.