“Well, I had been pretty well sprinkled, already. It wasn’t a question of wet and dry; it was a question of wet and wet. I was going off bareheaded, I lost my hat in the water, you know,—but your man, here, hailed me round the corner of the kitchen, and lent me one. I’ve been taking up collections of clothes ever since.”
Mr. Libby spoke lightly, and with a cry of “Barlow’s hat!” Mrs. Maynard went off in a shriek of laughter; but a deep distress kept Grace silent. It seemed to her that she had been lacking not only in thoughtfulness, but in common humanity, in suffering him to walk away several miles in the rain, without making an offer to keep him and have him provided for in the house. She remembered now her bewildered impression that he was without a hat when he climbed the stairs and helped her to the house; she recalled the fact that she had thrust him on to the danger he had escaped, and her heart was melted with grief and shame. “Mr. Libby”—she began, going up to him, and drooping before him in an attitude which simply and frankly expressed the contrition she felt; but she could not continue. Mrs. Maynard’s laugh broke into the usual cough, and as soon as she could speak she seized the word.
“Well, there, now; we can leave it to Mr. Libby. It’s the principle of the thing that I look at. And I want to see how it strikes him. I want to know, Mr. Libby, if you were a doctor,”—he looked at Grace, and flushed,—“and a person was very sick, and wanted you to consult with another doctor, whether you would let the mere fact that you hadn’t been introduced have any weight with you?” The young man silently appealed to Grace, who darkened angrily, and before he could speak Mrs. Maynard interposed. “No, no, you sha’n’t ask her. I want your opinion. It’s just an abstract question.” She accounted for this fib with a wink at Grace.
“Really,” he said, “it’s rather formidable. I’ve never been a doctor of any kind.”
“Oh, yes, we know that!” said Mrs. Maynard. “But you are now, and now would you do it?”
“If the other fellow knew more, I would.”
“But if you thought he didn’t?”
“Then I wouldn’t. What are you trying to get at, Mrs. Maynard? I’m not going to answer any more of your questions.”
“Yes,—one more. Don’t you think it’s a doctor’s place to get his patient well any way he can?”
“Why, of course!”