"It is a deuced queer thing," he said, "that a man can't stop for five minutes at a dam coffee stall without some fool or other finding work for him. I'll never go to that stall again. I'll be damned if I will. I ought to have got home half an hour ago."
"Yes," I said—I believe that vaguely I sought to comfort him—"and she would have been better off in the infirmary?"
"Don't talk foolishness, young man," replied the round little doctor. "You are talking dam nonsense. Infirmary—pooh! With a baby almost due, and with all those bruises! They would have made a complete job of it there. They would have kept her there for the lying-in and all—a six weeks' job at least."
"And would that matter?"
"Matter? Of course it would. That man will be out in a week, even if our local humorist doesn't let him off with a fine. What's to become of that poor girl's home, do you suppose, while she's in and he's out?"
"Would he touch it?"
"Do you live in this neighbourhood, sir?" The doctor wore a visage as of painful wonder.
I explained that I didn't.
The doctor's wonder grew. "What under heaven are you doing in the purlieus of Mile End Road at two in the morning, then?" he demanded.
"Sir," I said, with grand simplicity, "you behold in me the representative of an inexpensive but celebrated newspaper. I am come here, by editorial instruction, to seek out Blossom, the chimney-sweep philosopher, whose opinion on horse-racing we are anxious to secure for our magazine page. But Blossom has evaporated. Mrs. Blossom vainly seeketh him. So does the other woman's husband. I have prepared a full and detailed report of this disgraceful scandal, which will appear, together with photographs, on our sermon page next Sunday. And as, when I communicated by telephone with my editor, he was so kind as to relieve me from further intellectual activity for the day, and as I do not know Mile End, and as I——"