“Very well, I think, sir. I never saw her looking better in my life.”
“Good! Good! Ah! The times, they have changed,” and he looked around the daintily furnished apartment smilingly. “It is not as it was two months ago.”
“No, sir.”
“You also,” as he noticed her neat black dress and white cap and apron; “you are a very pretty girl, Maria.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“Do not thank me,” he replied with a chuckle. “I share in the pleasure it causes you. Now, Maria, don’t blush. I am old enough to be your father, and I like you because you are good to those two who are so dear to me. I am happy to see all these signs of prosperity. The Doctor’s practice must have increased?”
“I don’t think so, sir,” said Maria. “No patients ever come here, leastways none but the poor ones who don’t pay nothin’.”
“So? And yet he has not given the news of his discovery to the world. I do not comprehend.”
Maria hesitated for a moment, then faced him anxiously as though to say something, but after a moment’s pause she recovered herself and said respectfully:
“The Doctor is out, sir. Miss Lola is dressing. She will be here in a moment.”