“You had better give ze child her way,” said Dr. Hilary. “She’s in no state to be fretted with triffles [trifles, the doctor meant], and in ze end it will be well; for ze fever infection might harbor in zat doll’s head as well as elsewhere, and I should have to disinfect it, which would be bad for ze skin of her.”
“She isn’t a doll,” cried Amy, overhearing him; “she’s my child, and you sha’n’t call her names.” She hugged Mabel tight in her arms, and glared at Dr. Hilary defiantly.
So Katy with pitiful fingers slashed away at Mabel’s blond wig till her head was as bare as a billiard-ball; and Amy, quite content, patted her child while her own locks were being cut, and murmured, “Perhaps your hair will all come out in little round curls, darling, as Johnnie Carr’s did;” then she fell into one of the quietest sleeps she had yet had.
It was the day after this that Katy, coming in from a round of errands, found Mrs. Ashe standing erect and pale, with a frightened look in her eyes, and her back against Amy’s door, as if defending it from somebody. Confronting her was Madame Frulini, the padrona of the hotel. Madame’s cheeks were red, and her eyes bright and fierce; she was evidently in a rage about something, and was pouring out a torrent of excited Italian, with now and then a French or English word slipped in by way of punctuation, and all so rapidly that only a trained ear could have followed or grasped her meaning.
“What is the matter?” asked Katy, in amazement.
“Oh, Katy, I am so glad you have come,” cried poor Mrs. Ashe. “I can hardly understand a word that this horrible woman says, but I think she wants to turn us out of the hotel, and that we shall take Amy to some other place. It would be the death of her,—I know it would. I never, never will go, unless the doctor says it is safe. I oughtn’t to,—I couldn’t; she can’t make me, can she, Katy?”
“Madame,” said Katy,—and there was a flash in her eyes before which the landlady rather shrank,—“what is all this? Why do you come to trouble madame while her child is so ill?”
Then came another torrent of explanation which didn’t explain; but Katy gathered enough of the meaning to make out that Mrs. Ashe was quite correct in her guess, and that Madame Frulini was requesting, nay, insisting, that they should remove Amy from the hotel at once. There were plenty of apartments to be had now that the Carnival was over, she said,—her own cousin had rooms close by,—it could easily be arranged, and people were going away from the Del Mondo every day because there was fever in the house. Such a thing could not be, it should not be,—the landlady’s voice rose to a shriek, “the child must go!”
“You are a cruel woman,” said Katy, indignantly, when she had grasped the meaning of the outburst. “It is wicked, it is cowardly, to come thus and attack a poor lady under your roof who has so much already to bear. It is her only child who is lying in there,—her only one, do you understand, madame?—and she is a widow. What you ask might kill the child. I shall not permit you or any of your people to enter that door till the doctor comes, and then I shall tell him how you have behaved, and we shall see what he will say.” As she spoke she turned the key of Amy’s door, took it out and put it in her pocket, then faced the padrona steadily, looking her straight in the eyes.
“Mademoiselle,” stormed the landlady, “I give you my word, four people have left this house already because of the noises made by little miss. More will go. I shall lose my winter’s profit,—all of it,—all; it will be said there is fever at the Del Mondo,—no one will hereafter come to me. There are lodgings plenty, comfortable,—oh, so comfortable! I will not have my season ruined by a sickness; no, I will not!”
Madame Frulini’s voice was again rising to a scream.
“Be silent!” said Katy, sternly; “you will frighten the child. I am sorry that you should lose any customers, madame, but the fever is here and we are here, and here we must stay till it is safe to go. The child shall not be moved till the doctor gives permission. Money is not the only thing in the world! Mrs. Ashe will pay anything that is fair to make up your losses to you, but you must leave this room now, and not return till Dr. Hilary is here.”
Where Katy found French for all these long coherent speeches, she could never afterward imagine. She tried to explain it by saying that excitement inspired her for the moment, but that as soon as the moment was over the inspiration died away and left her as speechless and confused as ever. Clover said it made her think of the miracle of Balaam; and Katy merrily rejoined that it might be so, and that no donkey in any age of the world could possibly have been more grateful than was she for the sudden gift of speech.
“But it is not the money,—it is my prestige,” declared the landlady.
“Thank Heaven! here is the doctor now,” cried Mrs. Ashe.
The doctor had in fact been standing in the doorway for several moments before they noticed him, and had overheard part of the colloquy with Madame Frulini. With him was some one else, at the sight of whom Mrs. Ashe gave a great sob of relief. It was her brother, at last.
When Italian meets Italian, then comes the tug of expletive. It did not seem to take one second for Dr. Hilary to whirl the padrona out into the entry, where they could be heard going at each other like two furious cats. Hiss, roll, sputter, recrimination, objurgation! In five minutes Madame Frulini was, metaphorically speaking, on her knees, and the doctor standing over her with drawn sword, making her take back every word she had said and every threat she had uttered.
“Prestige of thy miserable hotel!” he thundered; “where will that be when I go and tell the English and Americans—all of whom I know, every one!—how thou hast served a countrywoman of theirs in thy house? Dost thou think thy prestige will help thee much when Dr. Hilary has fixed a black mark on thy door! I tell thee no; not a stranger shalt thou have next year to eat so much as a plate of macaroni under thy base roof! I will advertise thy behavior in all the foreign papers,—in Figaro, in Galignani, in the Swiss Times, and the English one which is read by all the nobility, and the Heraldo of New York, which all Americans peruse—”
“Oh, doctor—pardon me—I regret what I said—I am afflicted—”
“I will post thee in the railroad stations,” continued the doctor, implacably; “I will bid my patients to write letters to all their friends, warning them against thy flea-ridden Del Mondo; I will apprise the steamboat companies at Genoa and Naples. Thou shalt see what comes of it,—truly, thou shalt see.”
Having thus reduced Madame Frulini to powder, the doctor now condescended to take breath and listen to her appeals for mercy; and presently he brought her in with her mouth full of protestations and apologies, and assurances that the ladies had mistaken her meaning, she had only spoken for the good of all; nothing was further from her intention than that they should be disturbed or offended in any way, and she and all her household were at the service of “the little sick angel of God.” After which the doctor dismissed her with an air of contemptuous tolerance, and laid his hand on the door of Amy’s room. Behold, it was locked!
“Oh, I forgot,” cried Katy, laughing; and she pulled the key out of her pocket.
“You are a hee-roine, mademoiselle,” said Dr. Hilary. “I watched you as you faced that tigress, and your eyes were like a swordsman’s as he regards his enemy’s rapier.”
“Oh, she was so brave, and such a help!” said Mrs. Ashe, kissing her impulsively. “You can’t think how she has stood by me all through, Ned, or what a comfort she has been.”
“Yes, I can,” said Ned Worthington, with a warm, grateful look at Katy. “I can believe anything good of Miss Carr.”
“But where have you been all this time?” said Katy, who felt this flood of compliment to be embarrassing; “we have so wondered at not hearing from you.”
“I have been off on a ten-days’ leave to Corsica for moufflon-shooting,” replied Mr. Worthington. “I