"Not when you consider it as a surgeon's risk. You happen to be the one man who has the idea, and if it isn't carried out, the patient is going to die to-morrow night, permanently. You are the specialist in this case, and specialists come high. Now you may go and attend to the preliminary details, if you like." He found his hat and stood up. She stood with him; but when he took her hand she made him sit down again. "You have at least three degrees of fever!" she exclaimed; "or is it only the three-million-five-hundred-thousand-dollar shock? What have you been doing to yourself?" "Nothing, I assure you. I haven't been sleeping very well for a few nights. But that is only natural." "And I said you must have a cool head! Will you do exactly as I tell you to?" "If you don't make it too hard." "Take the car down-town--don't walk--and after you have made Mr. Loring send his message to Boston, you go straight to Doctor Biddle. Tell him what is the matter with you, and that you need to sleep the clock around." "But the time!" he protested. "I shall need every hour between now and to-morrow night!" "One clear-headed hour is worth a dozen muddled ones. You do as I say." "I hate drugs," he said, rising again. "So do I; but there is a time for everything under the sun. It is a crying necessity that you go into this fight perfectly fit and with all your wits about you. If you don't, somebody--several somebodies--will land in the penitentiary. Will you mind me?" "Yes," he promised; and this time he got away. XXVI ON THE HIGH PLAINS Much to Elinor's relief, and quite as much, perhaps, to Penelope's, Mrs. Brentwood tired of Breezeland Inn in less than a fortnight and began to talk of returning to the apartment house in the capital. Pressed to give a reason for her dissatisfaction, the younger sister might have been at a loss to account for it in words; but Elinor's desire to cut the outing short was based upon pride and militant shame. After many trap-settings she had succeeded in making her mother confess that the stay at Breezeland was at Ormsby's expense; and not all of Mrs. Brentwood's petulant justifyings could remove the sting of the nettle of obligation. "There is no reason in the world why you should make so much of it: I am your mother, and I ought to know," was Mrs. Brentwood's dictum. "You wouldn't have any scruples if we were his guests on the _Amphitrite_ or in his country house on Long Island." "That would be different," Elinor contended. "We are not his guests here; we are his pensioners." "Nonsense!" frowned the mother. "Isn't it beginning to occur to you that beggars shouldn't be choosers? And, besides, so far as you are concerned, you are only anticipating a little." It was an exceedingly injudicious, not to say brutal way of putting it; and the blue-gray eyes flashed fire.