“Rather!” responded George brightly.
Margaret was quite pained. She would have had him express doubt, despondently sigh; would have heartened him with her poem. The confident “rather!” jarred. She hurried from its vigour.
She asked: “What had you intended to do?”
“I was to have got a locum tenens. I think it would have developed into a permanency. A big, rough district up in Yorkshire with a man who keeps six horses going. His second assistant—a pal of mine—wants to chuck it.”
“Why?”
“Why? Oh, partly because he's fed up with it, partly because he wants a practice of his own.”
“Ah! ... But, George, don't you want a practice of your own? You don't want to be another man's assistant, do you?”
George laughed. “I can't choose, Margi. You know, if you imagine there are solid groups of people all over England anxiously praying for the arrival of a doctor, you must adjust that impression, as your father would say. These things have to be bought. I've got about three pounds, so I'm not bidding. They seldom go so cheap.”
Margaret never bantered. She had no battledore light enough to return an airy shuttlecock. Now, as always, when this plaything came buoyantly towards her she swiped it with heavy force clean out of the conversational field.
She said gravely: “Ah, I know what you mean. You mean that father ought to buy you a practice—ought to set you up when you are qualified. I can't discuss that, can I? It wouldn't be loyal.”