Doctor Thayer's jaw shot out and his eyes shone, but not with humor this time. He looked distinctly irritated. "But my dear Miss Agatha Redmond, where did you intend to go?"
Agatha couldn't, by any force of will, keep her voice from stammering, as she answered: "I wasn't g-going anywhere! I was k-kidnapped!"
Doctor Thayer looked sternly at her, then reached toward his medicine chest. "My dear young woman—" (Why is it that when a person is particularly out of temper, he is constrained to say My Dear So and So?) "My dear young woman," said Doctor Thayer, "that's all right, but you must take a few drops of this solution. And let me feel your pulse."
"Indeed, Doctor, it is all so, just as I say," interrupted Agatha. "I'm not feverish or out of my head, not the least bit. I can't tell you the whole story now; I'm too tired—"
"Yes, that's so, my dear child!" said the doctor, but in such an evident tone of yielding to a delirious person, that he nearly threw her into a fever with anger. But on the whole, Agatha was too tired to mind. He took her hand, felt of her pulse, and slowly shook his head; but what he had to say, if he had anything, was necessarily postponed. The launch was putting into the harbor of Charlesport.
Even on the dull day of their arrival, Charlesport was a pleasant looking place, stretching up a steep hill beyond the ribbon of street that bordered its harbor. Fish-houses and small docks stood out here and there, and one larger dock marked the farthest point of land. A great derrick stood by one wharf, with piles of granite block near by. Little Simon was calling directions back to Hand at the engine as they chugged past fishing smacks and mooring poles, past lobster-pot buoys and a little bug-lighthouse, threading their way into the harbor and up to the dock. Agatha appealed to the doctor with great earnestness.
"Surely, Doctor Thayer, it is a Providence that we came in just here, where people will know me and will help me. I need shelter for a little while, and care for my sick friend here. Where can we go?"
Doctor Thayer cast a judicial eye over the landscape, while he held his hat up into the breeze. "It's going to clear; it'll be a fine afternoon," said he. Then deliberately: "Why don't you go up to the old red house? Sallie Kingsbury's there keeping it, just as she did when Hercules was alive; waiting for you or the lawyer or somebody to turn her out, I guess. And it's only five miles by the good road. You couldn't go to any of these sailor shacks down here, and the big summer hotel over yonder isn't any place for a sick man, let alone a lady without her trunk."
Agatha looked in amazement at the doctor. "Go to the old red house—to stay?"
"Why not? If you're Agatha Redmond, it's yours, isn't it? And I guess nobody's going to dispute your being Agatha Shaw's daughter, looking as you do. The house is big enough for all creation; and, besides, they've been on pins and needles, waiting for you to come, or write, or do something." The doctor gave a grim chuckle. "Hercules surprised them all some, by his will. But they'll all be glad to see you, I guess, unless it is Sister Susan. She was always pretty hard on Hercules; and she didn't approve of the will—thought the house ought to go to the Foundling Asylum."