rt of at least two of the words.

"Pardon me, doctor," she said briskly, "but I am not an amateur
philanthropist. I trust I'm not an amateur anything. I am a business
woman earning my own living by my own labors and I pay taxes and for the
past year or so I have been a citizen and a voter. Please do not regard
me merely as an officious meddler--a busybody with nothing to do except
to mind other people's affairs. It was quite by chance that I came upon
this poor child and learned something of her unhappy state."

The choleric brows went up like twin stress marks accenting unspoken
skepticism.

"A child--of twenty-four?" he commented ironically.

"A child, measured by my age or yours. As I told you, I met her quite
accidentally. She appealed to me so--such a plucky, helpless, friendless
little thing she seemed with those hideous leather straps binding her."

"Do you mean to imply that she was being mistreated by those who had her
in charge?"

"No, her escorts--or attendants or warders or guards or whatever one
might call them--seemed kindly enough, according to their lights. But
she was so quiet, so passive that I--"

"Well, would you expect anyone who felt a proper sense of responsibility
to suffer dangerous maniacs to run at large without restraint or control
of any sort upon their limbs and their actions?"

"But, doctor, that is just the point--are you so entirely sure that she
is a dangerous maniac? That is what I want to ask you--whether there
isn't a possibility, however remote, that a mistake may conceivably have
been made? Please don't misunderstand me," she interjected quickly,
seeing how he--already stiff and bristly--had at her words stiffened and
bristled still more. "I do not mean to intimate that anything unethical
has been done. In fact I am quite sure that everything has been quite
ethical. And I am not questioning your professional standing or decrying
your abilities.

"But as I understand it, neither you nor Doctor Malt is avowedly an
alienist. I assume that neither of you has ever specialized in nervous
or mental disorders. Such being the case, don't you agree with me--this
idea has just occurred to me--that if an alienist, a man especially
versed in these things rather than a general practitioner, however
experienced and competent, were called in even now--"

"And you just said you were not reflecting upon my professional
abilities!"

His tone was heavily sarcastic.

"Of course I am not!