She was thankful for it, for there was no time to waste.  Her patient, smoking and chattering, was apparently indifferent as to whether he caught the steamer.  "I don’t reckon any ol’ doctor is goin’ to make a better job of this laig than you done," he said, carelessly.  But to Aileen it was unthinkable that they should not catch it.  She had no belief in her own ability to set a broken leg properly. That the boy should be cheerful, and almost out of pain, was a kind of pleasant miracle, but she could not realize that her unskilled hands could possibly have caused it.  She would not have been surprised if, at any moment, he had broken down again in shivering agony.  The dread lest she should have made some mistake almost choked her—how could she ever face him in the future if the leg she had doctored were crooked, or shorter than the other?  He was such a boy!  She could not bear to think that he might be crippled, and because of her.