“Now I’ll tell you a secret about yourself.” Miss Ennis stopped weeping.
“Ninety-nine cases out of a hundred I couldn’t handle as I am handling your case. They would need a month’s rest and building up before they’d be fit for real work. But you are naturally a powerful, muscular woman with great physical endurance and resiliency. What I am trying to do is to take advantage of your splendid equipment to pull you out.”
“What would you do with the ordinary case?” asked the girl, interested.
“Oh, put her to bed, perhaps. Perhaps send her away to the woods. Maybe set a nurse over her to see that she didn’t take to writing her symptoms down in a book. Keep her on a rigid diet, and build her up by slow and dull processes. You may thank your stars that—”
“I don’t thank my stars at all!” broke in the patient, as her besetting vice of self-pity asserted itself. “I’d much rather do that than be driven like a galley-slave. I’m too tired to get any pleasure out of anything—”
“Even bridge?” interposed the tormentor softly.
“—and when night comes I fall into bed like a helpless log.”
“That’s the best news I’ve heard yet. You’re progressing. Now take that new appetite of yours home to dinner. And don’t spoil it by eating too fast. Good-night.”
Fully a fortnight later Grandma Sharpless met Dr. Strong in the hallway as he came in from a walk.
“What have you been doing to Louise Ennis?” she demanded.