"I'll stay until you are yourself again. Never fear." He sighed faintly.
It was a new rôle for Doctor Beatty, but he played it better than would have been expected. Patty turned to the window and he heard the sound of sobbing steadily for some time. At last the sound ceased. She was sitting with her chin resting on her hand, which held her wet handkerchief crumpled up into a tight ball; and she was looking out through her tears, but seeing nothing, and she seemed to have difficulty in breathing.
"He's such a good boy—to me!" she said, without turning. "Such a good boy! I am so fond of him that it almost breaks my heart to have anybody say—say such things. How can they? How can they have the heart?" She gave a single sob.
CHAPTER XXI[ToC]
Sally sat by her window in the office of John Hazen, Inc., looking absently out of it. Doctor Beatty was talking to her earnestly, in low tones, and she was serious and sober, listening intently.
"Mrs. Upjohn," he was saying,—"thrifty soul!—came out to Sanderson's this morning with the grocer's boy"—Sally chuckled suddenly, in spite of her seriousness, but stopped as suddenly—"and went up to see Patty. I'd like," he interrupted himself to say emphatically, "to see every visitor of suspicious character required to show cause for seeing the patients. Yes," he nodded in reply to a questioning look of Sally's, "Patty is a patient. There's no doubt about that, I'm afraid. And Mrs. Upjohn is a suspicious character. There is no doubt about that either. Oh, yes, well-meaning, perhaps; even probably. But she should not have been allowed to see Patty. I consider Patty's condition—er—ticklish. Distinctly ticklish."
Sally was surprised. "What do you mean? How is her condition ticklish?"