"Three hundred dollars, and—I have lost patients, too. I have—"
"Sit down," she said. "Don't behave like a child." She went to her desk, wrote a check and gave it to him. "May I trouble you for a receipt?" He gave it, surprised and pleased. "And now do hold your tongue if you can, or if Mr. Schmidt does not beat you when he comes home, I will. You have no more decency than you have hair."
This set him off again. "Ah you think it is only money, money. You, a woman, can say things. I am insult," he cried. "I will have revenge of Schmidt, if he do come. I will have blood."
"Blood, I would," she said. "Get your lancet ready." She broke into laughter at the idea of a contest with the German. "I will hear no more. These are my friends." When in one of her fits of wrath, now rare, she was not choice of her words. Both were now standing. "A flea and a bear, you and Schmidt! Lord, but he will be scared—poor man!"
He too was in a fine rage, such as he never allowed himself with men. "Oh, I am paid, am I? That will not be all of it." He rose on tiptoe, gesticulating wildly, and threw his hands out, shaking them. There was a sudden clatter of broken china.
"Great heavens!" cried Gainor. "Two of my gods gone, and my blue mandarin!"
For a moment he stood appalled amid the wreck of precious porcelain, looking now at Miss Wynne and now at the broken deities.
The owner of the gods towered over the little doctor. Wrath and an overwhelming sense of the comic contended for expression. "Two gods, man! Where now do you expect to go when you die—"
"Nowhere," he said.