"Dr. Renault used to be in New York, you know,—had his own private hospital there for his operations. He had to leave the city and his work because he was threatened with consumption. For a year he went the usual round of cures,—to the Adirondacks, out West; and he told me that one night while he was camping on the plains in Arizona, lying awake watching the stars, it came to him suddenly that the one thing for him to do was to stop this health-hunt, go back where he came from, and go to work—and forget he was ill until he died. The next morning he broke camp, rode out to the railroad, came straight here from Arizona, and has been here ever since."
"But why here?"
"Because he came from Grosvenor as a boy. It must be a French family—Renault—and it is only a few miles north to the line…. So he came here, and the climate or the life or something suits him wonderfully. He works like a horse!"
"Is he interesting, your doctor?" Isabelle asked idly.
"That's as you take him," Margaret replied with a little smile. "Not from
Conny Woodyard's point of view, I should say. He has too many blind sides.
But I have come to think him a really great man! And that, my dear, is more
than what we used to call 'interesting.'"
"But how can he do his work up here?"
"That's the wonderful part of it all! He's made the world come to him,—what he needs of it. He says there is nothing marvellous in it; that all through the middle ages the sick and the needy flocked to remote spots, to deserts and mountain villages, wherever they thought help was to be found. Most great cures are not made even now in the cities."
"But hospitals?"
"He has his own, right here in Grosvenor Flat, and a perfect one. The great surgeons and doctors come up here and send patients here. He has all he can do, with two assistants."
"He must be a strong man."