Jim and Mary Connolly came out in the biting air to see them off.  Then Mary went over to the church to pray for Jean and Derry.  But first of all she prayed for her sons.

The Doctor, arriving at his office, at once called up Hilda.

“I must see you as soon as possible.”

“What has Derry Drake been telling you?”

“How do you know that he has told me anything?”

“By your voice.  And you needn’t think that you are going to scold me.”

“I shall scold you for disobeying orders.  I thought you were to be trusted, Hilda.”

“I am not a saint.  You know that.  And I am not sure that I want you to come.  I shall send you away if you scold.”

She hung up the receiver and left him fuming.  Her high-handed indifference to his authority sent him storming to Derry, “I’ve half a mind to stay away.”

“I think I would.  It won’t do any good to go—­”

But the Doctor went.  He still hoped, optimistically, that Hilda might be induced to see the error of her ways.

She received him in the blue room, where the General’s precious porcelain was set forth in cabinets.  It was a choice little room which had been used by Mrs. Drake for the reception of special guests.  Hilda was in her uniform, but without her cap.  It was as if in doffing her cap, she struck her first note of independence against the Doctor’s rule.

He began professionally.  “Doctor Bryer telephoned this morning that his attendance of the case had been only during my absence.  That he did not care to keep it unless I definitely intended to withdraw.  I told him to go ahead.  I told him also that you were a good nurse.  I had to whitewash my conscience a bit to say it, Hilda—­”

Her head went up.  “I am a good nurse.  But I am more than a nurse, I am a woman.  Oh, I know you are blaming me for what you think I have done.  But if you stood under a tree and a great ripe peach hung just out of your reach, could you be blamed for shaking the tree?  Well, I shook the tree.”

She was very handsome as she gave her defense with flashing eyes.

“The General asked me to marry him, and that’s more than you would ever have done.  You liked to think that I was half in love with you.  You liked to pretend that you were half in love with me.  But would you ever have offered me ease and rest from hard work?  Would you ever have thought that I might some day be your daughter’s equal in your home?  Oh, I have wanted good times.  I used to sit night after night alone in the office while you and Jean went out and did the things I was dying to do.  I wanted to go to dances and to the theater and to supper with a gay crowd.  But you never seemed to think of it.  I am young and I want pretty clothes—­yet you thought I was satisfied to have you come home and say a few careless pleasant words, and to tease me a little.  That was all you ever did for me—­all you ever wanted.