"No, but you could do this for me. To-night, Dr. Sandford, when you go round, you could indicate to me what I want to know, and nobody else be the wiser. When we come to any case that is serious, but with hope, take hold of your chin, so; if any is serious without hope, just pass your hand through your hair. You do that often."
"Not when I am going my rounds, Daisy," said the doctor, looking amused.
"I should - or I might - know better how to sing."
"Or you might not be able to sing at all. Though your nerves are good," the doctor admitted. "Women's nerves are made of a material altogether differently selected, or tempered, from that of masculine nerves; pure metal, of some ethereal sort."
"Are there such things as masculine nerves?" I asked.
"Do you doubt it?" said the doctor, turning a half reproachful look upon me.
"Dr. Sandford, I do not doubt it. And so, you will, for once, and as an extraordinary kindness, do this thing for me that I have asked you."
"The use of it is hidden from me," said the doctor; "but to admit my ignorance is a thing I have often done before, where you are concerned."
"Then I will take care to be with you as soon as you come in this evening," I said, "so as to get all you will tell me."
"If I do not forget it," said the doctor.
But I knew there was no danger of his forgetting. There was no taking Dr. Sandford off his guard. In all matters that concerned his professional duties, he was like steel; for strength and truth and temper. Nothing that Dr. Sandford did not see; nothing that he did not remember; nothing that was too much for his skill and energies and executive faculty. Nobody disobeyed Dr. Sandford - unless it were I, now and then.
I walked through the rest of that day in a smothered fever. How I had found courage to make my proposition to the doctor, I do not know; it was the courage of desperate suspense which could bear itself no longer. After the promise had been obtained that I sought, my courage failed. My joints trembled under me, as I went about the ward; my very hands trembled as I ministered to the men. The certainty that I had coveted, I dreaded now. Yet Mr. Thorold looked so well and seemed to suffer so little, I could not but quarrel with myself for folly, in being so fearful. Also I was ready to question myself, whether I had done right in seeking more knowledge of the future than might come to me day by day in the slow course of events. But I had done it; and Dr. Sandford was coming in the evening.