Page:Hilda Wade (1900).pdf/38

I mentioned the matter, with enthusiasm, to Sebastian later. 'It is very nice in its way,' he answered; 'but . . . it is not nursing.'

I thought to myself that that was just what it was; but I did not say so. Sebastian was a man who thought meanly of women. 'A doctor, like a priest,' he used to declare, 'should keep himself unmarried. His bride is medicine.' And he disliked to see what he called philandering going on in his hospital. It may have been on that account that I avoided speaking much of Hilda Wade thenceforth before him.

He looked in casually next day to see the patient. 'She will die,' he said, with perfect assurance, as we passed down the ward together. 'Operation has taken too much out of her.'

'Still, she has great recuperative powers,' Hilda answered. 'They all have in her family, Professor. You may, perhaps, remember Joseph Huntley, who occupied Number Sixty-seven in the Accident Ward, some nine months since—compound fracture of the arm—a dark, nervous engineer's assistant—very hard to restrain—well, he was her brother; he caught typhoid fever in the hospital, and you commented at the time on his strange vitality. Then there was her cousin, again, Ellen Stubbs. We had her for stubborn chronic laryngitis—a very bad case—anyone else would have died—yielded at once to your treatment; and made, I recollect, a splendid convalescence.'

'What a memory you have!' Sebastian cried, admiring against his will. 'It is simply marvellous! I never saw anyone like you in my life . . . except once. He was a man, a doctor, a colleague of mine—dead long ago. . . . Why——' he mused, and gazed hard at her. Hilda shrank before his gaze. 'This is curious,' he went on slowly, at last; 'very curious. You—why, you resemble him!'