"Or Uncle David?"
"No. I've got real right-down fond of Uncle David. He's a darling! There's nobody else in the world exactly like him."
Dr. Tremayne worked through his list of waiting patients at last, and went round to the stackyard to fetch his car. Mavis and Merle jumped joyfully in, and they drove away up the hill. They went in the opposite direction to the Sanatorium because the Doctor had a visit to pay at a farm, and he wished to combine with it a call on Mrs. Jarvis, whose cottage would be close by his destination. The manager of Trotman's Circus had sent some few possessions which had belonged to her son Jerry, and they had brought the parcel with them in the car.
"We'll have our lunch first," decreed Uncle David, "then we'll go and see the poor old body afterwards. I want something to eat before I interview any more patients."
They chose a quiet spot at the edge of a wood, and drawing up the car on a patch of grass by the roadside, they took their basket among the trees and spread forth their picnic. Jessop had provided handsomely for them, and they immensely enjoyed the meal in the open air.
"If I'd only time, I'd go skirmishing all over Devonshire. It's my ideal of a holiday, to motor just where you like, and not have to think of your surgery," admitted Dr. Tremayne, throwing pine cones at the girls, and behaving quite boyishly in spite of his sixty-five years.
"Can't Daddy take surgery for you while he's over and give you a rest?" suggested Merle. "I'm sure he'd help if he could."
"It's rather a brain wave. Perhaps he might," said Dr. Tremayne thoughtfully. "I'm growing a little tired of being perpetually in harness. When a man gets to my age he begins to crave for some leisure. I've been trying for the last three years to write a book on 'The Treatment of Tuberculosis', but I can't find the time to do it. Directly I begin somebody rings up and wants me to go and see them."
"I should smash the horrid old telephone and then they couldn't ring you up," laughed Merle.
"That's all right, little Pussie, but they'd send a messenger to fetch me instead, so it would come to just the same thing in the end."