"It's pleurisy, he says," she answered. "Pretty sharp."
He unwound himself in the passage.
"He may want a nurse then."
"He won't," cried the woman, the note of challenge in her voice. "I'll nurse him."
"Can you manage it—with your work?"
"If I can't no one else shan't," the woman snorted, almost threateningly. "First door on the left."
Mr. Trupp, grinning to himself, went up the stairs, and was aware that the woman was standing at the foot watching his back. She did not follow.
The young surgeon climbed thoughtfully, absorbing his environment, as the good doctor does. The varnished paper on the wall, the cheap carpet under his feet, the sham drain-pipe that served as an umbrella-stand in the passage; they were all the ordinary appurtenances of the house of this class, commonplace, even a little coarse, and affording a strange contrast to the almost exotic refinement and distinction of the sitting-room on the ground floor. The house too was bright and clean as a hospital, hard too, he thought, as its landlady. There was no lodging-house smell, his nose, trained in the great wards of the Whitechapel, noted with approval. Windows were kept clearly open, sunshine admitted as a friend. He trailed his fingers up the bannisters and examined them, when he had turned the corner and was out of sight of the woman watching in the passage. Not a trace of dust! Yes, when he was in a position to start his Open-air Hostel on the cliff for tuberculous patients, this was the woman he should get for housekeeper.
He knocked at the door on the left, suddenly remembering that this must be the room in the window of which hung the chocolate-coloured Apartments card.
Young Caspar's voice bid him enter.