"I am summoned in haste to a very sick patient," he said, "and merely stepped in, in passing, to ask Mrs. Lamar's kind offices for another who is suffering from the lack of proper nursing."
"Those poor devils of country doctors have a hard life of it," remarked Lyttleton superciliously, when Kenneth had gone.
"It is a noble, self-sacrificing life," replied Nell, with some hauteur, "I know of none that is more so than Dr. Clendenin's."
She would not have Kenneth pitied or patronized by this insolent stranger, and she glanced with scorn at the white hands, delicate and shapely almost as a woman's, one of which was toying with the seals of a heavy gold watch chain in a way to display to advantage a brilliant gem that glittered on the little finger.
They were alone at the moment, the major and his friend having followed Mrs. Lamar and Kenneth to the outer door.
Lyttleton lifted his eyebrows meaningly, and with a slight expressive shrug of the shoulders:
"Ah, I beg pardon, Miss Lamar! an intimate and particular friend of yours? I was not aware of it; and in fact was merely speaking of the class in general."
"And I was defending the whole profession," remarked Nell, "of which Dr. Clendenin, our family physician, is the representative to us. We owe him much for his kind and faithful services in more than one dangerous illness among us."
Lyttleton remarked that her sentiments did her honor; then with a desire to introduce a fresh topic, "You have an odd character in that Mr. Dill," he said, "or is that the sort of grace usual at meals in this part of the world?"
"I never heard such from any one else," Nell answered with gravity. "He is an excellent man, but slightly deranged. There was a meeting of one of our church courts in town yesterday, and he always attends. But he has gone now to his home and we shall probably see no more of him for some time."