Grace went to Mrs. Maynard's room, and told her that Dr. Mulbridge was
coming directly after dinner.

"I knew you would do it!" cried Mrs. Maynard, throwing her right arm
round Grace's neck, while the latter bent over to feel the pulse in her
left. "I knew where you had gone as soon as your mother told me you had
driven off with Walter Libby. I'm so glad that you've got somebody
to consult! Your theories are perfectly right and I'm sure that Dr.
Mulbridge will just tell you to keep on as you've been doing."

Grace withdrew from her caress. "Dr. Mulbridge is not coming for a
consultation. He refused to consult with me."

"Refused to consult? Why, how perfectly ungentlemanly! Why did he
refuse?"

"Because he is an allopathist and I am a homoeopathist."

"Then, what is he coming for, I should like to know!"

"I have given up the case to him," said Grace wearily.

"Very well, then!" cried Mrs. Maynard, "I won't be given up. I will
simply die! Not a pill, not a powder, of his will I touch! If he thinks
himself too good to consult with another doctor, and a lady at that,
merely because she doesn't happen to be allopathist, he can go along! I
never heard of anything so conceited, so disgustingly mean, in my
life. No, Grace! Why, it's horrid!" She was silent, and then, "Why, of
course," she added, "if he comes, I shall have to see him. I look like a
fright, I suppose."

"I will do your hair," said Grace, with indifference to these vows and
protests; and without deigning further explanation or argument she made
the invalid's toilet for her. If given time, Mrs. Maynard would talk
herself into any necessary frame of mind, and Grace merely supplied the
monosyllabic promptings requisite for her transition from mood to mood.
It was her final resolution that when Dr. Mulbridge did come she
should give him a piece of her mind; and she received him with anxious
submissiveness, and hung upon all his looks and words with quaking
and with an inclination to attribute her unfavorable symptoms to
the treatment of her former physician. She did not spare him certain
apologies for the disorderly appearance of her person and her room.

Grace sat by and watched him with perfectly quiescent observance. The
large, somewhat uncouth man gave evidence to her intelligence that he
was all physician--that he had not chosen his profession from any theory
or motive, however good, but had been as much chosen by it as if he
had been born a Physic