Let me send for our city physician, Doctor Betts.
Never was such a man at diagnosis. He seems to look right inside
of one and see everything that's going on wrong."
"For heaven's sake don't send for him then!" exclaimed Ida.
Mrs. Mayhew looked askance at her daughter a moment, and then asked
bluntly:
"Why? What's going on wrong in you?"
"I do not know of anything that's going on right,--to use your own
phraseology."
"You mean to say, then, that there is something wrong?"
"You intimated at the breakfast-table that everything was going
wrong. So it has seemed to me, for some time. But come, mother,
drugs can't reach my trouble, and so you can't help me. You must
leave me to myself."
"I think you might tell your own mother what is the matter," whined
Mrs. Mayhew.
"I think I might also," said Ida, coldly. "It is not my fault but
my great misfortune that I cannot."
At this Mrs. Mayhew whimpered: "You are very cruel to talk to me
in that way."
"I suppose I'm everything that's bad," Ida answered recklessly.
"That seems to be the general verdict. Perhaps it would be best
for you all were I out of the way. I can scarcely remember when
I have had a friendly look from any one.
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