seen the young sea-captain once or twice in the village recently and been
fluttered by his notable good looks?--had rescued the girl, and carried
her home, carried her up here across the landing and along the familiar
schoolroom passage, with its patterned Chinese wall-paper, gently and
carefully, in his arms.

And these qualifying terms--gentle and careful--rankled to the point even
of physical disturbance, so that Miss Bilson again became guilty of
inelegantly choking, and clearing her throat for the second time with a
foolish crowing sound.

"I will postpone my interview with Miss Damaris until after breakfast
to-morrow," she said, thus leaving Mary Fisher virtually, if not
admittedly, master of the field.

But long before breakfast time, in the grey and mournful autumn
morning, Patch rattled the dog-cart the seven miles into Stourmouth, as
fast as the black horse could travel, to fetch Damaris' old friend, the
retired Indian Civil surgeon, Dr. McCabe. For, coming to herself, in
the intervals of distracted fever dreams, she had asked for him, going
back by instinct to the comfort of his care of her in childish
illnesses long ago. Since she was ill enough, so Mary said, to need a
doctor, let it be him.

"Not Mr. Cripps out of the village, or Dr. Risdon from Marychurch. I
won't see them. I will not see anyone from near here. Keep them away from
me," she commanded. "I know Miss Bilson will try to send for one or the
other. But I won't see either. Promise you'll keep them away."

When, after his visit, Theresa Bilson, considerably flustered and
offended, found McCabe breakfasting in the dining-room and offered
profuse apologies for the inconvenience to which he must have been put by
so early and unnecessary a call, the tender-hearted and garrulous, but
choleric Irishman cut her uncommonly short.

"And would you be supposing then, that if the dear blessed child should
be desirous of consulting me I wouldn't have rejoiced to come to her a
thousand times as early and from ten thousand times as far?" he enquired,
between large mouthfuls of kidney and fried bacon. "The scheming little
pudding-faced governess creature, with a cherry nose and an envious eye
to her"--he commented to himself.

"But you do not apprehend anything serious?" Theresa said
stiffly--"Merely a slight chill?"

"With a temperature dancing up and down like a mad thing between a
hundred and one and a hundred and three? I'm dashed if I like the loo