Even then there came into Emma McChesney's ordinarily well-ordered,
alert mind the uncomfortable thought that she was talking nonsense.
She made a last effort to order her brain into its usual sane
clearness, failed, and saw the coarse white table-cloth rising swiftly
and slantingly to meet her head.
[Illustration: "'Shut up, you blamed fool! Can't you see the lady's
sick?'"]
It speaks well for Emma McChesney's balance that when she found
herself in bed, two strange women, and one strange man, and an all-
too-familiar bell-boy in the room, she did not say, "Where am I? What
happened?" Instead she told herself that the amazingly and
unbelievably handsome young man bending over her with a stethoscope
was a doctor; that the plump, bleached blonde in the white shirtwaist
was the hotel housekeeper; that the lank ditto was a waitress; and
that the expression on the face of each was that of apprehension,
tinged with a pleasurable excitement. So she sat up, dislodging the
stethoscope, and ignoring the purpose of the thermometer which had
reposed under her tongue.
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