Hen, having her own theory of events, gave a defiant tug to her new sailor-hat.  She considered that she looked very nice to-day, and she did.  She, too, had been patronizing the midsummer sales, and beside the sailor, she had on a new linen skirt which she had got for $1.75, though the original price-mark was still on it and said $5.

“Cally,” she continued, “wrote a good deal about her mother’s being dropped from the officers of the Associated Charities.  Well it’s too bad, of course, but somebody’s got to take the blow, V.V., and I imagine it’s going about where it belongs.  Serves her right, I say, for the sort of mother she’s always been, doing her best to educate all the decent feeling out of Cally, and then trying to break her when she was doing the best thing she ever did in her life.  In fact—­I don’t want to brag, but I expect the talk I’ve spread around town has had a good deal to do with the way things have gone.  She married mother’s brother and all that,” said Hen, “but I detest and despise her and always have.”

V.V. burst out laughing, and Hen observed:  “Well, I’m glad I said that.  It’s the first smile I’ve seen from you this month.”

She stood by the old secretary, looking down at him, and she thought what a hard life he had down here, and how his face looked too refined for this so practical world....

“Now, V.V., really,” said she, “why can’t you leave your work to this man Finnegan for just a week and pack your little bag and run down to Aunt Rose Hopwood’s farmette—­really?  Tee Wee and Loo are there, and everybody’ll be delighted to have you.  In the open air all day, sleep ten hours every night, eat your blessed head off.  No mosquitoes.  No malaria—­”

“I can’t go now, Hen.  It’s impossible.  Thank you just the same.”

He spoke quite irritably, for him, and Hen, having had this subject up more than once before, desisted and turned to go.

“Well, take some sort of care of yourself, V.V.,” she said from the door.  “Don’t be a goose.  And, by the way, be very gentle with your little friend Corinne.  You know she thinks you put up the moon.”

V.V. had meant to be gentle with Corinne, but in the light of this remark he resolved to be gentler still.  He sat for ten minutes in abstraction after Henrietta had gone; and then, rising abruptly, picked up the chart, went down the long hall, pushed aside the light green curtain that swung in front of a door, and passed into the sick-room.

Kern lay alone with her geraniums, awning, whirring fan, and other ladylike appurtenances.  Mr. V.V. sat down by the white iron bed and introduced a thermometer into her mouth.  He possessed himself of her wrist, took out his silver watch and presently wrote something on the chart.  He took out the thermometer and again jotted upon the chart.  Then he gave the patient two tablespoonfuls of peptonoids.  All this in silence.  And then Kern said in a whimpering little voice: