"I could hardly explain it, sir. Twenty years of being with Mr. Bing—"
There was an awkward pause. The obvious thing to do was to ask Thorpe who it was Bing did want, and something in the poise of Thorpe's head suggested that he was just waiting to set the whole matter straight, when hurried footsteps were heard in the hall, and a nurse entered—an eager panting young woman. She beckoned to Creighton and they spoke a few seconds apart. Then he turned back to the group with brightened face.
"At last," he said, "Mr. Bing has spoken the first name. It is Margaret."
Cora caught a glimpse of Thorpe quietly bowing to himself—as much as to say, "Just what I had expected."
Mrs. Johnson-Bing rose.
"My name is Margaret," she said, and left the room with the doctor.
Hermione rose, too, hunching her cape into place. "Well," she said without taking the least notice of Thorpe, who was opening the door for her, "that's one chore you and I don't have to do. He was bad enough healthy—sick he must be the limit."
Cora did not so much ignore Hermione as she conveyed in her manner as she turned to Thorpe that everyone must know that whoever might be the object of Mrs. Moore-Bing's conversation it could not be herself.
"Tell me, Thorpe," she said, "what do you think of Mr. Bing's condition?"