"You must spray your throat immediately," my mother-in-law said in a businesslike way, "and I suppose we ought to send for that jackanapes of a doctor."
Even through my suffering I could not help but smile at my mother-in-law's reference to Dr. Pettit, who had attended her in her illness. She had summarily dismissed him because he had forbidden her to see to the unpacking of her trunks when she was barely convalescent, and we had not seen him since.
"I'm sure I will not need a physician," I said, trying to speak distinctly, although it was an effort for me to articulate. "Wait until Dicky comes, anyway."
For distinct in my mind was a mental picture of the look I had detected in Dr. Pettit's eyes upon the day of his last visit to my mother-in-law. I remembered the way he had clasped my hand in parting. The feeling was indefinable. I scored myself as fanciful and conceited for imagining that there had been anything special in his farewell to me or in the little courtesies he had tendered me during my mother-in-law's illness. But I told myself again, as I had after closing the door upon his last visit, that it were better all around if he did not come again.
"If you wait for Richard, you'll wait a long time," his mother observed grimly. "He called up a while ago, and said he had been invited to an impromptu studio party that he couldn't get away from, and that he would be home in two or three hours. But I know Richard. If he gets interested in anything like that he won't be home until midnight."
I do not pretend either to analyze or excuse the feeling of reckless defiance that seized me upon hearing of Dicky's absence. I reflected bitterly that I had taken all the burden of seeing to the new home, and was suffering from illness contracted because of that work, while Dicky was frolicking at a studio party, with never a thought of me.
I know without being told that Grace Draper was a member of the frolic. And here I was suffering, yet refusing the services of a skilled physician because I fancied there was something in his manner the tolerance of which would savor of disloyalty to Dicky!
I turned to my mother-in-law to tell her she could summon the physician, but found that I could hardly speak. My throat felt as if I were choking.