Indeed, Helen was a puzzle to her sisters, and had they met her for the first time as you, my readers have, no doubt they would have formed the same opinion of her as you must have: a selfish, heartless, headstrong girl. Now Helen was in reality none of these terrible things, except headstrong. Thoughtless she was and spoiled, but generous to a fault, with a warm and loving heart. Her love for her father was intense and she simply would not see that he was ill. As Douglas said, she disliked and mistrusted all doctors. If the first and second and third were wrong in their diagnoses, why not the fourth? As for this absurd talk about money--what business was it of this young stranger to put his finger in their financial pie?
She shut her mind up tight and refused to understand what Dr. Wright had endeavored to explain to them, that there was no time to call in consultation their old friends and relatives. Besides, he wanted no excitement for the sick man, no adieux from friends, no bustle or confusion. He just wanted to spirit his patient away and get him out of sight of land as fast as possible.
How could a perfect stranger understand her dear father better than she, his own daughter, did? Nervous prostration, indeed! Why, her father had nerves of steel. You could fire a pistol off right by his ear and he would not bat an eyelash! She worked herself up even to thinking that they were doing a foolish thing to allow this beetle-browed young man to carry off their mother and father, sending them to sea in a leaky boat, no doubt, with some plot for their destruction all hatched up with this ship's surgeon, this one time classmate.
"To be sure, he was nice to Bobby," she said to herself as she sat in her room, undecided whether to go get the new hat in spite of Douglas or perhaps twist the other one around so it would be more becoming. "That may be part of his deep laid scheme--to get the confidence of the child and maybe kidnap him.
"I'll give in about the hat, but I'll not give in about seeing Daddy before he goes--I'm going to see him right this minute and find out for myself just how sick he is, and if he, too, is hypnotized into thinking this doctor man is any good. He shan't go away if he doesn't want to. Poor little Mumsy is too easy and confiding."