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A four by six cut of a photograph taken from the crest of the Cobble showed the great steel towers of the finished transmission line crossing the valley at New Winton. There was also three-quarters of a front-page column about it. Henry Harris, examining the weekly issue of the Sansbury Times while he sat on the step of Bates' store on Thursday morning, observed beneath the cut the minute italics: Courtesy Interstate Light & Power, and allowed himself to smile. You wouldn't catch Marden wasting money.

Henry Harris' interest, though detached, was personal. No one in New Winton knew it, and no one would be likely to guess from the Times' vigorously Republican editorial attitude, but the controlling interest in the paper, and in the Times Print Shop, had long ago joined the host of miscellaneous properties always quietly accumulating in Henry Harris' hands.

Owning the Times was really one of Henry Harris' amusements, and by far the most expensive one. Not that it actually cost him anything, for the printing plant made up its deficit; but he did sacrifice a possible profit for the pleasure afforded him weekly. Marden, a stumpy, swearing little man, was a fanatically honest and economical manager. Knowing of course, that it would be good business for Henry Harris to scrap the paper, politics quite aside, Marden's continued assaults on the Democrats, whether in Sansbury, Hartford, or Washington, had a subtle extra note of defiance. He felt that he was tilting, too, at Henry Harris' indulgence. Every paragraph said also: "Put that in your pipe, Mr. Harris. If you don't like it, you know what you can do."

Henry Harris, his warm private smile lighting over the current example of Marden's valour, turned contentedly on to the section "headed New Winton Notes. These were written by Miss Kimball, and if Marden's exaggerated blustering hadn't been reward enough, Miss Kimball would certainly justify his extravagance. Miss Kimball's importance rested entirely on this little job; it made her feel that she was not merely the underpaid village Librarian, but actually somebody. Probably it contributed the assurance shown when she sided so haughtily with Mrs. Banning against Henry Harris. Not an unkind man, Henry Harris was content to enjoy the irony hard to miss in Miss Kimball's rudeness to the person whose most casual word could knock out the props of her whole self-esteem. The spectacle of her skating with dignity on this (had she only known) thinnest possible ice, tickled him. She did not ever mention Henry Harris, just to pay him for daring to differ with Mrs. Banning. As he did not wish to be mentioned, Miss Kimball was not only funny but perfectly satisfactory. He read: Mr. Norman Hoyt, the well-known artist, is planning to start on a motor trip to Santa Fe, New Mexico, Monday. He expects to be away for two or three months. Accompanying Mr. Hoyt will be Miss Valeria Hoyt, his daughter, and Miss Virginia Banning, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Herbert Tracy Banning. This item was the unquestioned cream of Miss Kimball's news; but immediately under it appeared the line: Mr. Ralph Kimball is confined to his home by a slight illness.

Henry Harris chuckled. "Next thing to nepotism," he remarked.

Lester Dunn, letting the store door close behind him and standing still on the step, said: "What the hell are you mumbling about, Henry?"

"Just enjoying the news. Smart girl, Miss Kimball. I hope the Times appreciates her. Where are you going?"

"Nowhere."

Henry Harris folded the paper and tucked it in the pocket of his old corduroy coat. He pointed a pipe stem at his car, standing isolated by the pavement edge. "Come on," he said, "I'll take you there."

"What's up?"

"You never can tell." He glanced at Lester. "You don't look so hot. Got a hangover?"

"Oh, I got a damn cold or something. I feel lousy. What's the trouble?" —'

"No trouble yet. You're probably getting this influenza I hear so much about."

"Bunk. It's something I ate." Driving slowly down the green, Henry Harris said, "How's Doc Bull's hand?"

"Don't know. I haven't seen him since Tuesday."

"Saw him Tuesday myself. By the way, he didn't say anything to you, did he?"

"No."

"I've got a notion he didn't hear anything that time. But he may think something's up. It would be sort of uncomfortable if he does. More I think of it, the more I'm afraid passion betrayed me, Lester."

"What does that mean?"

"Well, you see the whole business isn't really worth the money. I wouldn't have started it if I hadn't felt the urge to annoy my friend Matthew. He needs to be heated up every little while so he won't mildew. But —" He shook his head thoughtfully.

"Listen, Henry, I'm sorry, but I've spent that money, if you're thinking about a refund and calling it off. Besides, what difference does it make if Doc Bull knows? What will he do?"

"Probably nothing. But I like a neat job." He laughed. "You can usually take a chance on big things, Lester; but you have to be awful careful about little ones. Well, we'll try to mop up the spilt milk. Maybe it'll be a lesson to me."

"Lesson about what?"

"Maybe about paying people in advance."

"Watch out!" Lester said.

A glittering black car, going fast, gave them a perfunctory blare of horn and was by. "Doctor Verney," Henry Harris nodded. "Well, I guess Virginia'd better hurry up and get well if she's going to accompany Mr. Norman Hoyt, the well-known artist, to New Mexico."

"There're an awful lot of people sick in this town. Maybe Doc Bull will be so busy he won't get around to anything, anyway."

"Glad to hear it. What I'm worrying about is his getting around to see the mess the Interstate people left that camp in. I'm going to send Albert Foster up as soon as he gets off the job he's doing for Ordway. I hate to pay somebody else three dollars a day when Albert would do it for two fifty."

"Why didn't you make them clean up themselves?"

"Oh, that Snyder chap was kind of sore. I soaked them pretty hard for rent. That land on the hill isn't worth anything. They could have bought the whole mountain for less. They were late and wanted to get out so I thought I wouldn't bother them."

"What's it to Doc Bull?"

"Nothing, but if he wanted to, he'd probably figure out a way for the Board of Health to fine me. It's right on the edge of the water-supply area. After the way he got Banning about the dumping, anything might happen."

"Doc Bull would never bother to go up there. Being Board of Health here's just a racket. Keep your shirt on, Henry. We may make some money yet. Listen, drive over to my place, will you? I got the trots. Been on the can all morning."

"You better take a dose of something and go to bed. We'll never make any money with you laid up. Sure, being Board of Health's a racket; but you can't expect Doc Bull to run himself ragged for three hundred dollars a year salary."

 

A travelling clock whose silver face could be folded away in its supporting case of pale grey morocco was turned half towards her on the bedside table and Virginia Banning, shifting her head a little on the pillow, could see that it was five minutes to nine. Waiting a moment, concerned, to find out how she felt, she decided that to-day she was all right. There was perhaps a trace of faintness, a hint of yesterday's bad headache, but both would probably go as soon as she had some coffee. Relieved, she remembered wondering, when she felt so rotten on Tuesday and yesterday, if she were really going to be sick. She had not quite dared ask Doctor Verney how long what he called a touch of influenza might last, but her misery had a solid permanence which could easily mean a week or two. The Hoyts wouldn't be able to wait that long.

Brooding on the possible malice of fate so serving her, she had concluded that nothing could be more like life or her luck. You could see in it the dreary pattern of too many remembered anticipations which had somehow come to nothing. In fact, the whole plan had been perilous from the start. Like the first idea of going to Paris, motoring to Santa Fé had an ecstatic desirability which at once jeopardized it, made it inherently improbable. Frowning a little, she could even recall thinking, in feverish extravagance, that probably there was a God. Knowing that she regarded Him as a lot of nonsense, God was always on the alert to pay her sauciness with the inspired punishments of a loving kindness which did not care if she were really injured, and never made any mistake about what could hurt and disappoint her most.

She drew a breath, not wanting even now to tempt Heaven with too scornful a rejection of that possibility, and lifted her head enough to see that the morning was once more clear, the sunlight still warm on the trees. Shifting her head again, something arrested her. She came up sharply on one elbow, staring with a jolt of alarm at her pillow. How it could have got there was a mystery for the moment sinister and appalling, but the stain was undoubtedly blood. Revulsion was eased then by relief. Asleep, she must have suffered a slight nose bleed. Bringing her hand to her face she could feel blood dried on her nostril and lip.

"God, what a lousy mess!" she said. She threw back the covers and sat up, indignant.

The violence of the motion made her giddy, so she sat a moment, recovering her balance. Finally, standing up, impatient, she made for the bathroom door. Almost there, she was forced to realize in new, dismayed anger that she wasn't completely over her illness. An abrupt tightening cramp stabbed her bowels, a wave of sickness rushed up from them, landing with a painful impact inside her skull. The echo of it jarred, lingering, in her ears.

The handle resisted her. She tugged harder, half in support, trying to make her wrist turn. Something gave suddenly, but it was only the surface of the knob sliding on her palm, now lubricated disgustingly with sweat. Frustrated, she stood an instant trying to master the cramping nausea. Sweat was all over her now, and at once she was aware of cold, like a breeze on her. Down her back, under her arms, across her breast, the skin crawled, quailing from this strong draught. She put a bare foot out uncertainly, interrupting her partial stagger, held the sliding door knob and braced her other hand on the jamb while her body seemed suddenly porous, like weak white ice frozen full of air.

She must get back to bed, and she found herself phrasing it through the hard chatter of her teeth: But I would rather go to bed—the word bed was seized by a paroxysmal multiplication, a leaning tower of many million paper-thin but hard sounds soaring past view or reach. Shaken too violently to stand, her legs melted, her icy hands astoundingly failed. She went down on her side, in the weak relief of this surrender anticipating, even as immediately she felt, the cruel remote pain of bone banged on wood. The smooth floor held her face, turned sideways.

Opening, the door seemed only to have been waiting for this. But it was the other door, she realized. The bathroom door had not relented. "Take that damn knob down —" she managed to say. "You can't get in —"

Seeing that it was her mother, Virginia made at once an effort to get up. She would never convince anyone that she was all right and able to go; even what she said was crazy. Shutting her eyes, she forced an order into the words: "I meant, the door, not the knob —"

Picked up, she could feel her own lightness, and it amazed her; she weighed nothing. She could have floated on the ringing air. "Virginia, darling——"

"Leave me alone," she whispered automatically. "I just slipped —"

The bed mounted and met her shoulders and numb buttocks and light legs with a soft, intolerable jar.

"Oh, my God, my head —" she moaned. "Mother, my head aches —"

She got her chill wet hands to her forehead, palms grinding her eyebrows. She rolled her face into the pillow. In this hammer of pain she could hear another voice—it was Mary—crying: "Oh, the poor lamb! There, now—you go on, ma'am. There, Miss Ginny —"

"Hello," Virginia murmured, perplexed by the positiveness with which she could recognize Doctor Verney by his hands, by touch and a distinctive washed smell. His grave, oval face and intent brown eyes moved, smiling. "Hello, Ginny. What have you been up to?"

"I just sort of fainted, I guess —" But fainting, she saw at once, did not in the least describe it. "Have I been asleep?"

"I guess you have. How do you feel?"

 "I'm all right. My head hurt so damn much; but not now."

"Well, we'll fix you up in a hurry. Let's see the tongue. Now, wide open. That's it. All right."

"Am I going to be well? I mean, Monday. Am I—"

"I don't know why not! Only you mustn't keep getting out of bed. A little fever can weaken you a lot. Know that now, don't you?"

"I had a nose bleed."

"That's a nuisance; but at least it doesn't hurt much, does it? You stay in bed to-day and to-morrow. Saturday you ought to be all right. What would you like to eat?"

"Nothing."

"How about some ice-cream?"

"No. But I'd like some water ice. I'd like some  lemon water ice if they could get some."

"All right. Ice-cream would give you a little nourishment; but if you don't feel like it, don't eat it."

"It's too thick. I don't want it."

"All right. Here's a thermometer. Don't eat that." He put out a hand, bringing into view a gold wrist-watch. His fingers closed on her wrist. Virginia, interested, saw that the watch bore an amazing long, thin second-hand which made the whole round of the dial rapidly. Moved to comment on it, the thermometer halted her, so she made a vague circular motion with her finger.

"That's right," he agreed, smiling. "It's supposed to be easier to see. Got it for my birthday."

 

Her head, crowned by a preposterous black bonnet, was tilted reflectively to the side. She kept pursing her lips, making while she did it, George Bull knew, small decisive clicks with her tongue. She walked right past the path up to the house. George Bull, leaving his car by the roadside, said, "Whoa! Where are you bound, Aunt Myra?"

Stopping short on the gravel along the old lilac hedge, she turned, blinking. "Oh, George! My, you startled me! Well, I've been to see Susie. I just wanted to see for myself how sick she was."

"She'll be all right."

"Maybe, she will, and maybe she won't. I'm not setting myself up against you, George, but I can tell you one thing. I know now what's wrong with that girl, and likely with all these other people."

"You do, do you? Well, I wish I did."

"Now, don't you go laughing at me. When I was stopping with Mr. Cole's sister in New Haven, I learned all I need to about that. They had it in every other house. That little niece of mine, what's her name, had it. It all came just the same way. Now, George, what Susie's got's typhoid fever, sure as you're alive."

"Don't you believe it, Aunt Myra. This is Susie  who's sick, not that niece of yours."

"It won't do you any good, telling me not to believe it. I know. It's from drinking dirty water. Back whenever it was the water ran all dirty, I just said to myself: 'Myra, you watch out! ' "

"Just a little mud, Aunt Myra. You can drink all you want of it."

"Well, George, I don't believe you can. They had doctors in New Haven as good as you are, and they said that's what it was. That was in the year 1901. I remember."

"Typhoid fever is a disease caused by a specific organism, bacillus typhosus, Aunt Myra. Doesn't grow on trees. That organism has to be in the water. It can be clear water or muddy water; that hasn't anything to do with it."

"Maybe you're right, George. I don't know anything about all that. But what Susie's got is typhoid fever. I can smell, George. I know what it smells like."

"You can what?"

"A person has a smell, George. It's not a subject I'm going to discuss, but I'd know that smell anywhere."

"Listen, Aunt Myra; you can't have typhoid fever without getting it from someone! Now, nobody around here has had it. In forty years, there hasn't been a single case in this village. Matter of fact, it isn't easy to find a case anywhere nowadays!"

"Don't you go shouting at me, George. People might think you weren't so sure of what you're talking about, getting all excited that way. Now, you can call it anything you've a mind to. What concerns me is that Susie won't be off her bed for six weeks, supposing the Lord spares her; so I'm just going on up the road to see if one of those Baxter girls wants to come in, meanwhile."

"Lot of foolishness!, You wait a couple of days —"

"Now, George, with all these people sick, there's no sense in waiting. Everybody'll be wanting help. You go look in the water for some of those things, if you think they're there."

"You can't see them by just looking in the water, Aunt Myra. You —"

"When, then; what makes anybody think there are any, I'd like to know."

"You'd have to make a microscopic examination for evidence of fecal pollution —"

"Land sakes, then; why don't you take down that microscope you have sitting year in and year out on that closet shelf and use it?"

"It's quite a trick, Aunt Myra. Not much in my line."

"Well, I haven't any time to stand here arguing. If you can't find out yourself, it seems to me you'd better take my word. Now, I'll be back to fix lunch directly."

Grinning a little, he watched her depart. "That's a good one," he thought. "How would I know it was there if I couldn't see it? Why, I'd send my specimens to Torrington and let a lot of girls do it for me."

It would be girls, probably. Some little wench, as likely as not called Doctor What-is-it! It certainly seemed that women had a natural aptitude for bacteriology—or maybe one naturally evolved. If you watched one of them so much as flaming a platinum loop to fish in a test tube you got the point. They were effortlessly adept at the delicate scratching of culture surfaces, the casual quick trick of heat fixation without spoiling the smear or cracking the slide. Slight shoulders hunched in a familiar minute absorption; the clean narrow fingers faintly scarred, in patient practised movement; absorbed faces with a light gleam of sweat— men did it, not often so neatly, as a meticulous, irksome means to some experimental end; but these young women knew how to treat it as an end in itself. The implanted tradition of fine needlework had found an unforeseen outlet.

In his office, Doctor Bull set down his bag.

"Typhoid!" he thought. "That would be quite a show! Certainly make all the castor-oil I've dished out not such a good, idea!

He searched slowly along the line of books until he found the faded letters: W. Budd—Typhoid Fever, its mode of spreading and prevention. London. 1873. That was a great book in the old days; probably still was. Of course, treatment kept changing. It wasn't so long ago that Johns Hopkins, giving out the gospel, was starving patients as near death as not on the milk diet. Last he'd heard, they were yipping for forty-five hundred calories. Of course, they might have changed their minds again by now.

George Bull couldn't, personally, recall ever treating a typhoid case. Probably they'd been shown a few on the trips to the Detroit hospital when he was at school, and you certainly heard plenty about the theory of it, but as for the real thing — He flipped open the pages of Budd at random and read: . . . exhibited in turn all the most characteristic marks of the disorder . . . spontaneous and obstinate diarrhœa, tympanitis, dry tongue, low delirium, and other typhoid symptoms, together with (towards the end of the second week) the now well-known eruption of rose-coloured spots. —

Well! The disease didn't change; it was only the doctors. To have one of those smart young women would be kind of a help. He guessed they used the colon bacillus for an indicator of polluted water. Whether you could see it without staining and a lot of special tricks, he certainly didn't know. Probably not; and how would he recognize it if he did see it? The answer was, he wouldn't. "No sense bothering," he said aloud.

From the top shelf in the closet he dragged down the case. Age and dust had darkened the varnished surfaces: he soiled his hands as he pushed back the catch. He brought out the microscope and set it on his desk.

"Humph!" he said, half amused, for he could remember buying it at a state medical convention fully twenty-five years ago. He and a physician from Waterbury had spent a jovial afternoon in a saloon, and somehow it all ended in getting the microscope. His companion had noticed it in a pawn shop window. It bore the name of famous German makers; at the time it had been the very last word, and nothing was wrong with it but a first objective missing from the nose-piece. That, according to his companion, could either be replaced at small cost by writing to the makers, or not bothered about. In bacteriological research it was of no great value anyway. George Bull grinned, for he supposed that he must have represented himself as anxious to do such work; or perhaps, even, as already deeply and learnedly engaged in it.

Dipping a swab of cotton in alcohol, George Bull wiped the eye-piece and cleaned the stage. The illuminating mirror was badly clouded. The rack and pinion of the coarse adjustment seemed to have stuck, but finally he made it turn. Not wanting to use his right thumb, the graduated screw head of the fine adjustment resisted him even longer. Taking a handkerchief, he cleaned the condenser and the two objectives. With one eye closed, the other squinting in, he could see that plenty of dust remained. Particles of it, four hundred and forty times enlarged, littered the stage between the reflected enormous branches of his own bent eyelashes.

"Hell!" he said aloud. "This isn't getting me anywhere!"

 

He straightened up. He took the book that he had laid down, and leaning back began to read again. There was one thing about it, he reflected, there wasn't one of them who couldn't be displaying prodromal symptoms. Shutting the book once more, he reached for his bag, snapped it open. Arising, he began to gather together what he needed. "Maybe one hunch is as good as another," he said.

Jerking his car to a halt in front of the Kimball house, he walked up the path. It was Miss Kimball who opened the door, and he said: "I want to see your father. I'll go right up."

Disconcerted, she stammered: "Oh, well, I think he's asleep. Wouldn't later —"

"I'll wake him up." —

He brushed past her, leaving her staring, outraged, as he mounted the stairs. In the upper hall he pushed open the door of the sick room.

"How're you feeling, Ralph?" he asked. "We'll have a little light in here." He went and pulled up the drawn shade. "This isn't going to bother you any." He set his bag on the table. From it he produced an iodine bottle, some swabs and a syringe which he held up and shook. The door moved now and he saw Miss Kimball.

Still affronted, she said with a thin dignity: "Would you be kind enough to tell me what you are planning to do?"

"I will. I want to make a blood test. Come on, Ralph. Brace up."

Sitting on the edge of the bed, he shoved back the loose sleeve of the night-shirt. Unscrewing the cap of the iodine bottle, he pressed a swab over the mouth daubed a wide smear on the pallid blue line of the median basilic vein below the elbow joint.

"There's an alcohol burner," he said to Miss Kimball "and here's a match. Take the cap off and light it No, bring it here where I can reach it! Now you'd better look the other way or get out. One or the other Don't go keeling over as soon as you see blood."

He tightened the tourniquet which he had been adjusting, waited while the veins engorged, flamed the needle and jabbed it through the iodine-painted skin. "All right, Ralph," he said, "that didn't hurt you any —"

Glancing at the graduations in the glass, he pinched it off at fifteen cubic centimetres, freeing the needle. "That's it." He took the stained swab, smearing the arm again. "I'll be in to-morrow," he told Miss Kimball. "We may be getting somewhere. How we'll like it when we get there, I don't know. Pull that shade down again if the light bothers him."

Stirring on the bed, Ralph Kimball said hoarsely: "Feeling kind of bum, George. None of that stuff you gave me seems to do much good —"

"Well, that's the way with most of the stuff we give," George Bull answered. "Sometimes it helps; usually it doesn't."

To Miss Kimball, still looking at him with stiff distaste, he said: "Be pretty careful about washing your hands when you've been in here —" He considered her cheerfully and added, "Be a good idea to see that you sterilize the bed-pans and contents before disposing. Lysol's as good as anything else."

 

The pin at the low "V" of the ironed-down collar George Bull recognized as St. Luke's. She looked up from the desk, showing him, under the cap and rumpled reddish hair, large brown faintly oblique eyes in a demure short face. George Bull thought: "I could use that!" He said: "I'm Doctor Bull, from New Winton. I want to see Doctor Verney on an urgent matter."

"Yes, Doctor Bull —" Her voice had the automatic, submissive respect for physicians learned in the exact discipline of her hospital. "Doctor Verney is at luncheon; but I'll tell him at once." She arose, adding: "Won't you sit down?"

He stood, however, watching a moment the trim departing shift of her narrow shoulders, the precise desirable stir of her small buttocks under the immaculate uniform. "Ho, hum!" he grunted, and looked out of the reception-room window.

Over the long lawns, down the four leisurely spaced rows of great elms, flat on the narrow asphalt surface of the road known as Stockade Street—humbler Sansbury called it Millionaire's Row—sunlight fell pale and chill from a sky becoming overcast. There was an air of well-to-do, but not rich or fashionable, respectability in the bad architecture of the ample houses. The clumping of shrubbery, the generous spacing of the trees—each flagged sidewalk was forty feet from the edges of the asphalt road—seemed more suburban than rural. All was vaguely old-fashioned, the work of prosperous years in the nineties when Sansbury had been a quiet, informal summer resort for a few New York families who joined with the modestly moneyed best local people in friendly community.

Presently deaths and changed tastes had ended it. To present-day eyes Sansbury was left the poorer, for several fine old houses had been replaced by bad, bigger ones. Stockade Street lost actual continuity with its long past. It gained only an immense boulder to which was fastened a bronze plate marking the site of the seventeenth-century block-house, and an atrocious memorial library constructed of cobble-stones.

Across the street, towards the end, George Bull could just see the slate roofs, the dank red brick breaking out in eruptions of heavy woodwork—objectless bay windows, a small tower, graceless oversized verandas— of what had once been the Ross place. It was hard to believe, but he could remember making long drives down in a buggy, entertaining seriously the idea of marrying Maud Ross—or, he guessed he ought to say, marrying the First National Bank of Sansbury.

Maud had been a blankly plain, perhaps a little pop-eyed girl, with her mass of hair bundled up off a neck tightly protected by shirtwaist collars. Despite the material soundness of the scheme, it hadn't been possible to act very enthusiastic about her. Maud would certainly be pretty cold mutton, and though he finally forced himself to make a proposal, it was rejected. He could remember Maud unreally saying that she had never guessed that his sentiments were of That Sort. She would long ago have felt bound to tell him that she was not Free; she had an Understanding with Another. This absurd untruth merely added to the constraints of the situation. George's listlessness had been, perhaps by a very narrow margin, too marked. Frigidly aghast at her own doubtless uncertain idea of human copulation, she would have to be pressed to the ordeal harder than George could make himself press her. The decision had, in all likelihood, been a hard and unhappy one; for certainly, her fabrications properly discounted, it looked as though he must be her man, or she'd have no man at all—the suddenly recalled measures of that old tune went through his mind with a ghostly gay sweetness. He turned about to see the nurse coming back, her short face sweetly sensual, her pert flanks shifting. "To bed! To bed!" he thought, his appetite willingly tickled again. "Doctor Verney will be right out, Doctor Bull. Won't you wait in his office?"

On the walls here, visible from the armchair in which he seated himself, were three framed diplomas in cumbersome Latin—Harvard, Johns Hopkins, Vienna— George Bull guessed that the Vienna one was nothing much—six months fooling around with psycho-analysis or something. "Huh!" he thought, "all the fixings!" Doctor Verney came now through the door at the end. "Glad to see you, Doctor. Something up?" He went and closed the door to the reception-room. "Have a cigar."

"All right." George Bull took it from the held-out mahogany case. "Nothing wrong with them, is there?" Doctor Verney laughed. "Not that I know of. I generally stick to cigarettes during the day. I like a cigar after dinner." He sat down behind the massive polished desk. "All right, shoot!"

"Well," first of all, tell me something about the Banning girl's case. Just what do you make of it?" Doctor Verney, he saw, was embarrassed. He picked up a paper-weight, balanced it, set it down. Then he picked it up again. "Why, Doctor, I really don't make much of it. The patient's general condition is a little below par, and any trifling infection hits her harder than some people. It's grippe, or influenza—loose term, but what else can you say? Temperature about one hundred and two; rather slow pulse. Headache. Coated tongue. Bowels are loose with a certain amount of griping. No appetite. We've got her in bed and I think if she stays quiet there for a few days she'll be perfectly well."

"Uh, huh, Now, I have eleven cases a good deal like that. Some of them seem sicker than others; a few have additional symptoms. They've all come on since Monday. I'm not satisfied with the diagnosis. Are you?"

"Yes, on the whole, I am. What's your theory?" Doctor Bull bent and opened his bag on the floor beside him. "Want to try an experiment?" he asked, looking up. "I have a sample of blood here. Drew it in a syringe with a little citrate solution. I guess you have the facilities to see if you can grow anything from it. I'd be interested."

"We could do it, all right. But what are you looking for?"

"Bacillus typhosus. In view of the Banning girl, I thought you might like to find out."

Doctor Verney set down the paper-weight with an uncontrolled bump. "Have you any reason to suspect such a thing?"

"Well, I don't know that I have any you'd admit, Verney. Your style isn't mine; I'm just an old horse doctor, you know. I have to work on hunches. In this case, I don't mind telling you that I first thought of it when my aunt told me it was typhoid. I've been thinking about it a lot since, and damned if I don't pretty well believe the old lady's right."

Doctor Verney relaxed a little. "It's a hard diagnosis for a layman, Bull." He smiled, recovering the paper-weight.

"Most doctors have some trouble with the early stages, too, I guess. Not much to choose. Sure you couldn't be fooled?"

"I don't mean to imply that. Short of rose spots, I could very easily miss it. It simply looks like a long shot to me—unless you can lay your finger on a probable source of infection. Can you?"

"Well, I can use my head. Most things are out. There's no general distribution of milk. There hasn't been anything like a church supper. No flies. The cases are all in town, which means that there aren't any among people who have their own water supply."

"That's good reasoning," admitted Doctor Verney. "But after all, it doesn't show anything about the water. Unless there have been cases in the vicinity I really can't believe — Well, I have a lot of respect for the opinion of a man of your experience; you probably know more about real, practical medicine than most of us young fellows will ever learn —"

"I wouldn't be surprised," agreed Doctor Bull. He could see the small disconcerted blink of Doctor Verney's eyes, and laughed. "You mustn't think I don't appreciate your sentiment," he said. "It just so happens that, barring bone-setting, a few surgical tricks, and some push and pull obstetrics for women too soft to turn the corner, I've found out there's no such thing as practical medicine. Glad to hand on the torch."

"Oh, it seems to me we do some good —"

"Well, if you're not interested in my aunt's idea, I can go to Torrington."

"No, no. I'd be glad to try it. There's a perfectly good ten per cent, bile solution out in the lab right now. We'll fix it up and incubate it. We could get some agar plate smears to-morrow and see if we have anything."

He pressed a button on his desk. When the door opened, he said, "Oh, Miss Stanley, I want to do a blood culture. We'll use that bile solution. I think there's plenty left. Put two hundred cubic centimetres in an Erlenmeyer flask. Add ten of this specimen of Doctor Bull's and shoot it in the incubator."

"Yes, Doctor Verney."

She went on past the desk to the closed door beyond the one open into the consulting-room. George Bull got a glimpse of sinks, shelves, and a long table crowded with bottles and tube racks. "I was born thirty years too soon," he observed. The door closed after Miss Stanley and he added: "You must find it quite a strain keeping chaste around here."

"Oh, no," Doctor Verney protested. "She's a nice girl, Bull. Comes from, a fine family."

"Uh, huh. Well, much obliged."

"I'll let you know to-morrow."

 

All Friday morning the cold west wind came bitter across the hills, poured hard and furious down the valley from North Truro. Off the worn bare earth of the playground beside the New Winton School, whirls of dust lifted and drove away. On high, this pale, gritty haze trailed over the cemetery and rolled repeatedly past St. Matthias's church before dispersing.

May Tupping wrapped her old coat tight against the vicious edge of the gale. She bent into it as she came across the green at noon, her face turned aside, her eyes half closed, stung to exasperation by that roaring, senseless violence. Every few minutes bleakly covered by the journeying clouds, the sun was brilliant, but without comfort. The bare trees groaned in their crotches; a shutter banged; a sheet of newspaper had glued itself, flapping, about the legs of the soldier on the monument.

In the telephone office, Doris had a good fire. May struggled into this unstirred warmth, her cheeks whipped to colour, her eyes watering from the last hard assault of the wind down the small, sunless veranda.

"Hello," said Doris, yawning.

"Oh, that's the most awful wind! And after it was so nice —"

"That freak weather couldn't last long. How's Joe's cold?"

"He feels pretty bad to-day."

"That's tough. Well, I'll be getting on. Oh, say, listen! The damnedest thing happened. About an hour ago, Mrs. Talbot called up, and when I asked her for a number, she said she didn't want any number. She just wanted to know if anybody was here. She said she was kind of scared, because there was a man out on the road who kept looking at her. Honestly, May, she sounded goofy. Then, another thing she said was, I shouldn't tell Doc Bull because if he knew about it he was going to come down and kill her. After that she tried to ring up twice more, but I'd heard all I wanted to. I just, disconnected. She hasn't paid her bill for two months, I know, so we're supposed to refuse her service Saturday, anyway."

"I know," said May. "She hasn't any money. I don't know what on earth is going to happen to her. I suppose they'll have to send her somewhere."

"Well, I should think they would. But, anyway, I wouldn't bother about her line if I were you. It'll just give you the creeps, May. I'm not fooling."

Sitting alone before the switchboard, May reflected that the worst part of Mrs. Talbot's trouble was how little any of it was Mrs. Talbot's fault. Her husband was dead. So was her son and her daughter. The same amazing clean sweep had been made of her relatives. Fifteen or twenty years ago there had been quantities of Millers up on Cold Hill, and almost as many Darrows. Now she was the only Miller left. Of her father's sister's children there was none left— Jed Darrow's widow and son couldn't help even if they wanted to. Bill Talbot had two brothers. Both of them had been in the Navy, and both of them were taken, dead, from a submarine which had lain three weeks, fatally injured, in the mud off New London. Mrs. Talbot was perhaps forty, and certainly looked nearer sixty. She hadn't any money, and no means of getting any. Plainly she was a sick woman; she might even, as Doris suggested, be really crazy. When you got a case like that, you could see what a help it was to be able to believe all partial evil, universal good, or to feel sure that God was punishing Mrs. Talbot for offences so cunning that He alone saw them. Your reason might revolt at it, but at least it would give the speculative mind some peace. A possible security was implied. A little plan, which would make it impossible for such a torrent of disasters to touch you, was indicated—I have been young and now am old, yet have I not seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging bread.

 

There had been a lull, but now came a quick flurry of calls: for different stores; two for Doctor Bull, which Mrs. Cole answered; one to ask what time it was. The laborious progress of May's thought was interrupted; but in any event, she knew by now that thought would not get her anywhere. She might half see several points that would look true; or at least, look more likely to be true than several others; but how could she tell, knowing so little?

She remembered thinking—she had probably been fifteen or sixteen, and had doubtless just begun to half see points—that what she wanted was an education. Miss Coulthard, at school, had been interested in her, and they even made an effort to get a scholarship at Mt. Holyoke, but someone else got it. This was, of course, a disappointment; for she had seen, amazed, page after page of college catalogues ranked solid with numbered course after course—three courses in Provençal; fourteen courses in physics; two half courses in the Kantian philosophy; French literature from Ronsard to Rousseau; three lectures a week for half a year on the history of Portugal. Seeing really nothing that she did not long to know all about, she would have done anything to go there. Or perhaps she should say anything she could. She couldn't manage algebra.

Not quite crushed, although Miss Coulthard lost interest in her, she turned to the books in the New Winton library. When someone presented the library with the set of thirty-odd volumes containing all that was best in the world's literature, it seemed to May at least a godsend. While she might never be really educated, in the sense that Miss Coulthard with her Vassar degree was, she would soon be well-informed. What she had expected, she couldn't imagine; but she saw presently that even when she had finished all the volumes she would not know anything in particular. She got, when she got anything for her patience, entertainment, not instruction.

Facing such problems—surely the real meat of great minds—as why the Bannings should be rich, while Mrs. Talbot was destitute; or why, when they were both out together, similarly armed, on a similar errand, it was Joe who was shot and not Harry Weems, she had nothing to fall back on except the promptings of common sense. You had, if common sense was your only resource, nothing remotely resembling any of the conflicting conclusions of the philosophers. She had read as much of a translation of Plato as seemed to fall into the class of best literature several times, thinking at first that because of her ignorance she had not understood, and in a minute she might see its relation to the realities of existence; she saw instead that it really had none. It was pure wisdom, untouched by common sense.

Left to herself, and to what she could see of the universe, real and ideal were lost together in an indifference so colossal, so utterly indifferent, that there was no defining it. This immense mindlessness knew no reasons, had no schemes; there was no cause for it. Where could it begin; and why should it end? There was even an error in personifying the universe as It, saying: How could It either plan or prevent Mrs. Talbot's misfortunes? How could It care? "Only, I care," May thought. "I think it's terrible. It oughtn't to be that way."

 

"This is the Sansbury operator. One-one, please, New Winton."

Making the connection, May could hear Doctor Bull's voice, irritable, blare on the transmitter promptly. He must have been in the hall on the way out.

"Sansbury calling, Doctor Bull."

Doctor Bull roared again, "Hello, hello—Operator, who the hell is ringing me?"

"One moment, please —"

"Hello? Doctor Bull? Doctor Bull, Doctor Verney is calling. I'll connect you."

"Oh! That you, Verney? Hello. Got something?"

"I'm sorry to tell you that we certainly have." Doctor Verney's voice was clipped and urgent. "There's no doubt about it at all. Your hunch is absolutely correct. Doctor Moses happened to be over from Torrington and I've had him check up on it. He's just out of school and he's fresher on it than I am. Naturally, I haven't done any work with that particular bacillus and I hoped I might be mistaken. I'll be coming right up. If I can help you in any way—I mean I suppose we ought to collect specimens all around and get them to Torrington —"

"Well, come on then —"

May let go the key. Doctor Verney's agreeable tones and clear, educated accent always impressed her. Talking to you, he wouldn't make you feel so surely that he regarded your life or death as a matter of no importance, and considered you a fool to be roared at for bothering him about it. Whatever the present matter might be, she could see that he was genuinely concerned, ready to go to any trouble to do all he could. —, In the light of such a spirit, she wondered, as she had before, if it might not be possible to have him look at Joe some time. If Harry drove them down to the hospital, surely Doctor Verney would not refuse to see Joe just because he had been Doctor Bull's patient —the line lamps lit up together as the receivers were replaced. May pulled the plugs. As soon as Joe's cold was better, she would get Harry to do it.

 

A low-hung central chandelier with a bead fringe and six stained-glass panels framed in ornate, antique bronze poured light on the bare amber oak of Bates' dining-room table. There were five of them gathered around it, counting Doctor Bull himself. Matthew Herring, susceptible to chills, had left his black overcoat on, merely unbuttoning it and sitting back with his long legs crossed. His reflective, intelligent regard appeared fixed on the large framed picture of the Coliseum across the room, but nothing ever trapped him into the inattention of frank boredom. No matter how far away, he would be instantly back with quiet and concise objections to protect the town treasury. He knew all about special meetings.

Isaac Quimby, Second Selectman, had a cold. His round, pugnacious old nose was sore and red from the applications of a damp handkerchief. Behind his silver-rimmed glasses, his eyes glowered. His irritable misery was, of course, aggravated by the fact that it was his latest enemy, Robert Newell, Third Selectman, who-was holding matters up. He wasn't, however, sick enough to make him easy to handle—that was, anxious for nothing but to agree and get home. George Bull, considering his own sore bandaged thumb, shrugged. He wasn't feeling any too happy himself, and it wouldn't be surprising if he and Isaac had words before the evening was over. Isaac was yearning for trouble. Sarcastically, Clarence Upjohn had put his finger on that when Quimby grumbled something about getting on; time enough to wait for Newell if it came to voting. "Why don't you just go home?" Clarence said. "If there's any voting, we'll count you against whatever it is."

Quimby and Clarence Upjohn had been intimate friends for twenty years. Their quarrel, when it came, began over a matter of officers in the local Grange, but what made it irreparable was actually a piece of Henry Harris' work. Clarence, recognizing it, had been stung into pointing out that Isaac didn't have a mind of his own; he was simply Henry Harris' errand boy. There was too much truth in it for Isaac to take the charge calmly; he had to put himself in the detested position of insisting that Henry Harris' ideas were his own. At least he could that way avoid admitting that Henry had out-manoeuvred him into a practical direction and control of what had once been Quimby's business.

The way Henry always turned up with reason on his side was remarkable. In that case it had been about gasolene. Quimby's trucks had for years got their gas from the pumps outside Upjohn's store. Henry, taking a tighter and tighter grip on the business, soon decided to stop that. They used enough gas to put in a tank and private pump of their own. Clarence could see reason; all he really wanted was for Isaac to admit that he was doing it because Henry Harris was making him do it. This feud lasted perhaps a year, while they cut each other on all public occasions. Howard Upjohn then managed a reconciliation, a formal shaking-hands. Now, each held back the sharper edge of his hostility until the other was no longer present.

George Bull had never been able to decide whether it was simply the fine tart flavour of this ruined relationship which Henry liked; or whether it was actually all part of a long patient scheme to disrupt the Republicans beyond repair. Henry, he realized, had probably been right the other day. The word Republican couldn't stretch much farther when it included Banning and the scoffingly named Better Element; Bates and the Upjohns; Isaac Quimby and Ordway; and Robert Newell. No amount of oil-pouring by Bates, meek and neutral, could form a film wide enough to keep such an expanse smooth. George Bull supposed that he ought to include himself; he'd always voted Republican.

Bates, jumping up in an agitation of relief—he could feel the room already charged, with ill-temper and fear for the outbreak—said: "That sounds like Robert, now. Come on in," he called.

Clarence had opened his minute book on the table and put on his glasses. "Well, Newell," he said, looking up over them, "I hope we haven't kept you waiting. We came as quick as we could. Now let's give it a name. What is it, Walter? Special Meeting of Selectmen in Council, Friday, March sixth—called by whom?"

"Just put your coat on the chair there, Robert," Bates said. "Sorry we had to bring you all the way down from North Truro. Why, if the meeting will now come to order; why, Doc Bull asked me to call you together to discuss a matter of public health. I guess that's all I know about it. You might as well go ahead and say whatever it is, Doc."

"For God's sake!" said Newell. He pulled out a chair indignantly, with a sort of expressed contempt for its lightness, holding it, erect and angry. "What's the idea, Doc? Why can't you wait until to-morrow?"

Newell's mouth snapped shut under the short-cropped black moustache. The natural belligerent stare of his brown eyes widened. Had a drink or two, George Bull decided. There was a distinctive note of bold, unnecessary hardness about Newell. Although he had been born in Truro, he went West as a boy, spent several years in Idaho. Back with him he brought a probably spurious western air—a suggestion of whisky, of violent horses violently treated, of boots and ropes and whips (not confirmed, a rumour concerned the use of one of the whips on his wife). He was known to patronize and believed to promote the cock-fights secretly held at a village just across the New York state line.

As owner and manager of Lakeland Lodge & Camps, up on Quail Pond, beyond North Truro, he was, as New Winton counted things, an economic factor. During the course of the summer he would require supplies for as many as five hundred guests, in transient lots of fifty or sixty—girls in knickerbockers and silk stockings; men who wore cheap coloured polo shirts with invariable cigars in their mouths. George Bull, summoned professionally from time to time, could testify that those who wanted it got plenty to drink at the Lodge. Now and then, he had reason to believe that couples sharing a cabin were not married to each other. Around the barber shop, Lester Dunn had made it more or less the fashion to call the camp Tail Lake, but Lester's mind ran along those lines. George Bull, in a somewhat better position to know, didn't believe that any more out of the way went on there than most places. What talk there was could be traced largely to Lester's imagination and Quimby's quarrel with Newell over horse feed and ice. It was Quimby who barked out now: "Sit down, young fellow! We've wasted plenty of time already. You hear the business first and tell us what you think afterwards."

Newell's thick lip curled a little under the cropped moustache, but he said merely: "Another county heard from! All right, Doc."

"This won't take long," George Bull said. "Doctor Verney has been up from Sansbury this afternoon with me. As some of you know"—he jerked his head towards Bates—"we've been taking blood specimens. Thirteen in all. They're over at Torrington now. In that sense, we haven't a complete confirmation, and won't have until to-morrow or the next day; but Doctor Verney made a culture yesterday, and I don't think there's any reasonable doubt about the situation. Probably every one of those tests is going to show the same thing, so we may as well say right now that what we've got's a first-rate typhoid fever epidemic."

He turned his glance down the table, inspecting them. In the silence Matthew Herring said quietly: "Dear me, Doctor, that's really terrible! Are you quite sure?"

Ignoring this, since the others were still staring simply, George Bull raised his voice. "Now, let's not waste time. Doctor Verney agrees with me that the most sensible immediate measure would be to arrange tomorrow for general inoculations. We can't do much about what's already started, but we can at least try to prevent any spread from established cases. I suppose the inoculations can't be made obligatory, but we ought at least to make them free of charge. We'll have the telephone exchange ring up all numbers and explain. I want everyone in town, and particularly the school children—everybody who doesn't show any febrile symptoms, that is—to be ready to take a first injection to-morrow morning. Better do it down at the school. Somebody can get hold of Getchell and have him arrange it. To-morrow's Saturday and there won't be any classes, but the buses had better collect the children as usual. I hope to have the vaccine here—at least enough to start—within the next hour or so. If you'll just vote an appropriation to cover it, that'll take care of that. Now, we have one other job —"

Pausing, he looked at Matthew Herring, who, somewhat to his surprise, simply nodded. He might, after all, have foreseen that. Herring could be pretty stingy with the town money, but he had enough intelligence to —Isaac Quimby said sharply: "Hold your horses, Doc. There may be some of us who don't believe much in sticking children full of those bugs at the public expense. Myself, I've heard it's a lot of nonsense, anyway. I wouldn't have any child of mine —"

"I don't know that I hold with it, either, George," said Clarence Upjohn, poising his pen. "All this vaccinating stuff—I know Howard darn near lost his arm when they were doing it to him for smallpox back in —"

"All right, we'll vote about that later. You'll have to do what I say, so I won't waste time arguing with you. You've got one vote, Isaac. I think Newell and Walter Bates have sense enough to back me up, so you can use it any way you like. The other matter is this. I want to find a place we can use for a hospital. It doesn't have to be much; but a certain number of cases can't be properly nursed at home. Verney's afraid that the Sansbury hospital's too small to spare any nurses, but we can get some from Torrington all right. The Ewarts' house is the best place I can think of. See if you can get old Jethro to let you use it, Walter. If you can't, we'll just use it anyway."

He looked directly at Bates, who was sitting forward in his chair, the light fairly on his pale face, his lips busy with his shaggy moustache ends. "I will, George." He swallowed, and meekly taking the opening, said, "I suppose you mean then—well, that is, I suppose that that's what Geraldine's got?"

"Well, I'm afraid so. I didn't tell you this afternoon because I wanted to get it settled here before it was being passed all around town. Sorry if it's a shock; but you know the way Emma gabs, I guess."

Isaac Quimby, halted for a moment, said now: "Look here, George, you take a pretty high hand, it appears to me. I'm not agreeing to any of that needle stuff. Especially I'm not when you can't show me yet any proof that this is more than some idea you and Verney cooked up. Said yourself you wouldn't know until —"

"Ah, don't be a drivelling idiot; or if you are, try not to show it!" Robert Newell's loud and cruel voice leaped negligently at him. "You vote no; and I vote yes, so we can go home now and let Walter do what he's told. This doesn't seem to concern Truro much, so I haven't any more to say." He stood up.

"Maybe you haven't," rasped out Quimby, infuriated, "but let me tell you the township of New Winton may have something to say when you try to start up your whorehouse next summer. Maybe you'll have something to say to the State police. You better start getting it ready —"

"Listen, Grandpa, don't make me mad. Why, you superannuated little runt, I might forget you had a foot in the grave and knock your face in. You'd better go home to bed."

"That's a fine idea," agreed Clarence. "The rest of us can settle the details —"

"Now let's all calm down," Matthew Herring said. "I have a few questions I'd like you to answer, Doctor, before anyone goes home. Am I right in believing that there must be a source of infection for an outbreak of this sort?"

"You are."

"Has that been located?"

"Yes, by process of deduction. Samples of the water are over at Torrington for bacteriological examination. The typhoid bacillus doesn't live long in ordinary water, but there are more robust organisms which indicate pollution satisfactorily. I imagine they'll find some. If they don't, we'll have to look for something else; but nothing else seems indicated. That reminds me that when Isaac began his objections, I wanted to add that it would be just as well not to drink the water without boiling it. We'll see that people are warned about that."

"I see. Yes, that would seem wise. You inspect the reservoir pretty regularly, don't you, Doctor?"

"Why, yes. I keep an eye on it."

"In spite of that, then, the water has been contaminated in some way?"

"In my opinion."

"I see. This must have been a recent thing, then?"

"Well, it's hard to say. There have been plenty of cases in which the organisms have remained alive all winter, frozen in ice. You can't tell."

"I see. By the way, when did you last make an inspection?"

"Why, I really couldn't say, Herring. Not for some time. There isn't much to inspect. It's well fenced and posted. That's about the most you can do. The Water Board has to look out for the mains and valves. If Eric Cadbury sees anything, I go up and look it over. Nobody's around there. No reason to —"

"Yet somebody must have been. Am I correct?"

"Well, if that's your way of saying that dung from a person harbouring the typhoid bacillus has got into the water, you are."

"How about the construction camp? That's in that general direction, isn't it?"

"It's quite a way back. I don't think it could have any connection, as far as the camp itself is concerned. Some of the men might go wandering around."

"Well, come on, come on," said Robert Newell. "Grandpa and I want to get home."

"One more question, Doctor. Did you ever inspect the camp? I mean, are you in a position to say definitely that there could be no connection?"

"You heard me say it, Herring."

"You haven't answered my question, Doctor."

"H'm," grunted Clarence, "aren't you supposed, as Board of Health, to sort of check up on that, George?"

"I don't know that I am. They got out last Friday. The property belongs to Henry Harris, and I'll go up some time and see that he has it cleaned up, if it needs it. We generally give them a little time. As a matter of fact, I guess you're Tree Warden, Newell. Seems to me it might come under the head of fire prevention—I mean, getting the buildings out of there."

"Well, I don't see it that way, Doc."

"Then, in fact," said Matthew Herring, studying the Coliseum, "you never did at any time inspect the camp or its sanitary arrangements, Doctor?"

"That's right, I never did."

"Suppose, then, we inspect it to-morrow?"

"Who is we?"

"You and I. Walter if he cares to come. Perhaps Eric Cadbury, on behalf of the Water Board."

"I won't have any time to-morrow."

"Perhaps Walter and I could look at it. Or would you rather have somebody from the State Health Department?"

"But, Matthew," Walter Bates said, "why couldn't we wait until Doc Bull could go?"

"Yes. Why the pressing hurry, Herring?"

"I've got this to say —" Quimby had got to his feet.

"It appears to me that there may be some responsibility here. Wouldn't be surprised if Herring were trying to get at that. You were in hurry enough yourself, Doc, about all this injection business. I'm not going to sit around here to-night, but maybe we'd better find out just why, if it's true, Doc Bull didn't bother to do any of these things."

"You're kind of out of temper, Isaac," suggested Clarence. "I don't think Matthew meant any such thing. Nobody but yourself seems to suit you to-night —"

Matthew Herring looked back from the Coliseum. His drawn, sober face was still composed, and he spoke evenly, without emphasis. "I'm afraid that that's what I did mean. Some of you don't seem to have grasped the situation. I think Doctor Bull will agree that typhoid fever in epidemic proportions is a disaster of the first magnitude. He won't question my right to want a complete explanation. If there is any blame to be assigned, we must assign it. Public health may need more attention than we have been giving it."

"Than you have been giving it is right!" George Bull said. "You don't give it any. When something like this happens, you go yowling for help, and who's to blame? Herring, you're at liberty to investigate what you please, when you want to. All we need from you is your signature on the authorizations for expenses. I hope you won't impede matters any more than you can help."

 

Doctor Verney said: "Back again, Mary." He put his hat, and driving gloves tossed into it, on the table. "Let me take your coat, sir. Mrs. Banning is in her sitting-room, if you'll go right up —" He slipped out of the heavy black fur-lined coat, and she took it. "Oh— this is Miss Valentine, Mary. She's going to be the night nurse —"

"Yes, Doctor Verney. How do you do, ma'am."

"I'll want to give you and Ethel the first injections before I go. We must be as careful as we can. You don't object to taking it, do you?"

"No, indeed, sir. We'll be ready whenever you want."

"Good. We'll go up, Miss Valentine. Mary, will you ask Larry to get Miss Valentine's luggage out of the rumble seat —"

Mr. Banning was standing by the fire in the sitting-room upstairs, and Mrs. Banning arose. "Mrs. Banning, this is Miss Valentine. And Mr. Banning —"

Mrs. Banning said: "I'm afraid you've had a terrible trip, Miss Valentine. Of course you've had supper?"

"Yes, Mrs. Banning. Doctor Verney took care of me."

"Perhaps some coffee after that cold drive. Let me;

have some sent up —"

"You're very kind. If it's no trouble. But—"

"Of course it's no trouble." She lifted the round ear-piece from the hook beside the small enamelled telephone box: "Mary—oh, Ethel. May we have some coffee, please." She hung up the earpiece, turning back. "I've put Miss Stanley in Guy's room—Doctor Verney, how are you going to get on without her? I feel so guilty about letting you leave her here—but I thought I'd put Miss Valentine in the west room; it would be fairly quiet and there won't be sun in the morning. I'll show you now. Larry will have your things there. Miss Stanley's with Virginia. I think that cot has been set up—"

"It has, my dear," said Mr. Banning. "You sit down, I'll show Miss Valentine her room —"

She remained standing, though, turning again to Doctor Verney, and he said: "Mrs. Banning, I don't want you to worry. The reason that I want Miss Stanley to be here, and that I was anxious to get Miss Valentine, is simply that it's mainly a nursing problem, and they're both extremely intelligent. The point is to keep the patient as comfortable as possible and to see that complications don't get a chance to start —"

The phrasing, he felt, was excusable; but what he meant was, to see that complications, when they started, would not be overlooked or misinterpreted.

Mrs. Banning's expression changed, in a kind of disciplined -obedience as she forced her anxiety to yield a little ("Everything is being done —"); but her eyes remained on him, half-pleading for a more absolute and, of course, impossible reassurance. She stood with her remarkable, unconscious light erectness—you could guess the years of chiding and reproof, when a child, when a girl at school—Don't slouch; a young woman's posture is the real test of her appearance; Lucile, hold your head up! Finally it succeeded. At forty, it was part of her; even her disquiet had a reserved, inbred politeness. Her distress of mind expressed itself in hardly perceptible small nervous tremors. A great anguish of anxiety broke her speech into short, distracted sentences, but each one finished and precise. In a sense, pride had her on the accustomed rack. Habit, so patiently formed, gave her no choice but steeling herself against any giving-way which might be necessary or even permissible for others. As she accepted without question the privileges, she accepted, too, the exact obligations of being born a New Haven Brooks. Vulgar reliefs were closed to her. Without perfect success, but with all her heart, she held to a tradition, not in the easy right of an established aristocracy, but, if possible, prouder for being less public—the deliberate ascetic superiority of the dying Puritan strains. Make the wilful body do right! Make the doubtful heart fear nothing!

Doctor Verney said: "Typhoid fever, properly cared for, is very rarely a grave matter, Mrs. Banning."

Mr. Banning, leaving Miss Valentine, had gone downstairs; for her luggage hadn't yet appeared. Coming from the room shown her, Miss Valentine was walking up the hall when she saw the door at the far end open and a white uniform step out. "Why, Peg!" Miss Stanley said, "you certainly got here!"

"Three-twenty train from town, by the skin of my teeth. Doctor Verney drove me up from Sansbury."

"Don't touch me, darling. I'm all germy. How are you?"

"Fine. I've got loads to tell you about everyone." She lowered her voice. "Laura, what a lovely house!"

"They're awfully nice people. You'll like it."

"How's the patient?"

"Pretty sick, poor kid. She's got a hundred and four right this minute. You'll have baths all night, I expect. I just finished one. My dear, she's so thin you could weep. Ask the doctor to come in when he can, will you?"

Mr. Banning was coming upstairs now. He had one of Miss Valentine's suit-cases in either hand. "There you are," he said. "Larry seems to be laid up. Everything considered, I think we'd better have him looked at."