"Do you make _that_ a sign of lunacy?" Mrs. Creve flung in.

"I am quoting, you know." The doctor smiled indulgently. "They declare
that they offered--even begged--to stay behind with him, one of them, at
least, but he rejected their company in a manner so unpleasant that they
saw it would only be courting a quarrel to remain. And so, treating him
perforce like a child _or_ a lunatic _pro tem._, and having but little
time to decide in, they cut loose and hurried back for help. This is the
tale, composed on reflection. They said nothing of this to Winslow--to
save publicity, of course! Mrs. Bogardus's lips are doubly sealed, for her
son's sake and for the sake of the young scamp who is to be her son, by
and by! I saw she winced at my opinion, which I gave her
plainly--brutally, perhaps. And she asked me particularly to say nothing,
which I am particularly not doing.

"This, I think, you will find is the bitter drop in the cup of rejoicing
upstairs. And they are swallowing it in silence, those two, for the sake
of the little girl and the old friends in New York. Of course she has kept
from Paul that last shot in the back from those sweet boys! The packer had
some unruly testimony he was bursting with, which he had sense enough to
keep for her alone, and she doesn't want the case to spread. It is
singular how a man in his condition could get out of the way as suddenly
as he did. You might think he'd been taken up in a cloud."

"Doctor, what do you mean by such an insinuation as that?"

"Colonel, have I insinuated anything? Did I say she had oiled the wheels
of his departure?"