“I wouldn’t have had anything happen to Kitty,” he began, emphatically. Then, as he glanced up at Hugh from under his shaggy grey eyebrows, he seemed to remember that he was speaking to a stranger, and stopping short, sank wearily back.
“I took you for a vision of ‘Hamlet,’” he said, with a short laugh. “You looked like it—all black against the light, bending over your books.”
“My black clothes?” said Hugh. “I am just in mourning for my mother. I am house-surgeon here.”
Sir Roderick looked at him less coldly, and murmured some thanks. Then he asked the time.
“I want to telegraph. I was expected home—in the country—to-day,” he said. “Perhaps—I could go this afternoon.”
Hugh convinced him that this would be, if not impossible, the height of imprudence.
Sir Roderick listened to reason, but bargained that he should write a telegram now, at once, while he was able.
So excitedly did he plead, that Hugh reluctantly fetched a telegram form from the secretary’s room, and propped his troublesome patient up in the bed, that he might fill it in himself.
But the pencil fell from Sir Roderick’s fingers, the effort made him feel faint.
Not till an hour after was the telegram despatched, and then it was Hugh who had written it at Sir Roderick’s dictation:—