"Well!" said Jane. "Are you going to stand for it?"
The red-haired man threw up his hands. "The village is with him," he declared. "It's a factional fight—the village against the fashionable summer colony on the hill. I cannot telephone from the village—the telegraph operator is deaf when I speak to him; the village milkman and grocer sent boys up this morning—look here." He fished a scrap of paper from his pocket and read:
I will not supply the Valley Hospital with any fresh meats, canned oysters and sausages, or do any plumbing for the hospital until the reinstatement of Dr. Sheets.
T. Cashdollar, Butcher.
Jane took the paper and read it again. "Humph!" she commented. "Old Sheets wrote it himself. Mr. Cashdollar couldn't think 'reinstatement,' let alone spell it."
"The question is not who wrote it, but what we are to do," said the red-haired person. "Shall I let old Sheets come back?"
"If you do," said Jane fiercely, "I shall hate you the rest of my life."
And as it was clear by this time that the red-haired person could imagine nothing more horrible, it was settled then and there that he should stay.
"There are only two wards," he said. "In the men's a man named Higgins is able to be up and is keeping things straight. And in the woman's ward Mary O'Shaughnessy is looking after them. The furnaces are the worst. I'd have forgiven almost anything else. I've sat up all night nursing the fires, but they breathed their last at six this morning and I guess there's nothing left but to call the coroner."
Jane had achieved a tolerable plate of toast by that time and four eggs. Also she had a fine flush, a combination of heat from the gas stove and temper.