Miss Hansford had never been ill herself, and did not believe much in the ailments of other people. All they had to do was to make an effort and brace up. But Elithe baffled her. She could not get her to brace up, or wake up either, although she shook her and called her loudly by name. “I hate a doctor like pisen, but I’ve got to have one,” she decided, and the first man who passed the house was sent in quest of one. He was a young practitioner, new in the place, and very full of his own importance as an M. D. After asking a few questions and holding Elithe’s hand longer than Miss Hansford thought there was any need of he began to diagnose the case with so many long words that she lost her temper and exclaimed: “For the land’s sake, quit the encyclopædia and talk common sense. What’s the matter with her?” “Nervous exhaustion, amounting almost to nervous prostration, complicated with fever and some slight gastric derangement of the stomach, brought on by too long fasting and eating improper food. Nothing dangerous, I assure you. Nothing but what will yield readily to treatment,” was the doctor’s reply, as he stirred his two glasses of water and told how often to give it. “What’s your price?” Miss Hansford asked, with her characteristic habit of having things “on the square.” The doctor looked at her a moment before he replied: “Two dollars a visit.” Then he went away, saying he would come again in the afternoon. Miss Hansford did not believe in homeopathy at all, and sniffed a good deal at the water in the tumblers and the price she was to pay for it. But she gave it religiously and watched Elithe very closely until the doctor came again. If the case was not dangerous it was certainly puzzling to him. For a few days Elithe lay in a kind of stupor, seldom moving so much as her hand or opening her eyes. The doctor with the big words and little pills was dismissed, and one called in his place from Still Haven, a second from the Basin, and a third from a hotel. One was an allopathist, another an eclectic, the third a Christian Scientist, and all fools, Miss Hansford said, dismissing them one after another as she had the homeopathist, and taking the case in her own hands. If nothing ailed Elithe but nervous exhaustion, she’d get over it without doctors, she said. Those were very anxious days which followed when Miss Hansford stayed by Elithe night and day, except when her duties called her below. She washed Elithe’s clothes herself, finding in the pocket of the flannel dress the box with the diamond ring in it. Once she thought to open it, but a sense of honor forbade, and she put it carefully away in the trunk from which she removed Elithe’s dresses, recognizing Lucy Potter’s wedding gown and understanding in part the sacrifice the mother had made for the daughter.