No—as she suddenly looked up—it was not the same! What! that wild-rose, tender young face, with large grey eyes, the same as that saucy, imperious minx of the portrait? No relation, I could swear it.
“Well, Hamlet!” Sir Roderick was quite warm in his welcome.
“I didn’t look myself. No, unmistakably I did not. Overwork, of course; the foul atmosphere, too. Oh! I might say what I liked. Mine was a good hospital in its way, doubtless; but all the same, the atmosphere was a foul one. Else, why the disinfectants?”
“You mentioned some unheard-of sum that you annually spend in disinfectants, and you can’t deny it,” he said. “Well, here you will have Nature’s disinfectants—pure air, and the scent of the pines and the heather and the hay. But I have not introduced you. Lilia, this is Dr. Paull.”
The lovely girl, who wore white stuff with something red twisted round her waist, had been looking at me like children taken to the Zoo for the first time look at the wild beasts.
She did not bow to me. I felt the blood come to my face. What on earth was she staring at? Then she turned to him, and said slowly:
“Doctor Paull?”
It was not flattering, but I understood.
“You are right—not Doctor,” I said. “There is much work before me before I can claim that title. I am only a medical student—”
“Bosh!” interrupted Sir Roderick. “I know what Lilia means. I never have any young men here; she expected one of the old fogies. That’s it, isn’t it, child?”