Chapter 17

A STRANGE RECOGNITION

Gradually I was aware of somebody moistening my temples. A soft palm
held my hand. Elsie was leaning over me. I opened my eyes with a
start.

"Oh, Elsie," I cried, "how kind of you!"

It seemed to me quite natural to call her Elsie.

Even as I spoke, somebody else raised my head and poured something
down my throat. I swallowed it with a gulp. Then I opened my eyes
again.

"And Jack, too," I murmured.

It seemed as if he'd been "Jack" to me for years and years already.

"She knows us!" Elsie cried, clasping her hands. "She's much
better--much better. Quick, Jack, more brandy! And make haste
there--a stretcher!"

There was a noise close by. Unseen hands lifted me up, and Jack laid
me on the stretcher. Half-an-hour at least must have elapsed, I felt
since the first shock of the accident. I had been unconscious
meanwhile. The actual crash came and went like lightning. And my
memory of all else was blotted out for the moment.

Next, as I lay still, two men took the stretcher and carried me off
at a slow pace, under Jack's direction. They walked single-file
along the line, and turned down a rough road that led off near a
river. I didn't ask where they were going: I was too weak and
feeble. At last they came to a house, a small white wooden cottage,
very colonial and simple, but neat and pretty. There was a garden in
front, full of old-fashioned flowering shrubs; and a verandah ran
round the house, about whose posts clambered sweet English creepers.

They carried me in, and laid me down on a bed, in a sweet little
room, very plain but dainty. It was panelled with polished
pitchpine, and roses peeped in at the open window. Everything about
the cottage bore the impress of native good taste. I knew it was
Jack's home. It was just such a room as I should have expected from
Elsie.

The bed on which they placed me was neat and soft. I lay there
dozing with pain. Elsie sat by my side, her own arm in a sling.
By-and-by, an Irish maid came in and undressed me carefully under
Elsie's direction. Then Elsie said to me, half shrinking:

"Now you must see the doctor."

"Not Dr. Ivor!" I cried, waking up to a full sense of this new
threatened horror. "Whatever I do, dear, I WON'T see Dr. Ivor!"

Jack had come in while she spoke, and was standing by the bed, I saw
now. The servant had gone out. He lifted my arm, and held my wrist
in his hand.

"I'm a doctor myself, Miss Callingham," he said softly, with that
quiet, reassuring voice of his. "Don't be alarmed at that; nobody
but myself and Elsie need come near you in any