"What now?" demanded Dr. Raste sharply, afraid that his connoisseurship should have been mistaken and she would stampede.
She ran down after him. His gaze indicated danger. He did not mean to have any nonsense.
"I suppose you couldn't just see Joe for a minute?" she stammered, with a blush. This now faltering creature had a moment earlier been calmly ready to do the best she could in circumstances which would scarcely bear looking at.
"Joe? What Joe?"
"Your old Joe. He's here, sir. Upstairs. Came last night, sir. He's very ill. I'm looking after him too. Master doesn't know."
"What in God's name are you talking about, my girl?" said the doctor, moved out of his impassibility.
She told him the facts, as though confessing a mortal sin for which she could not expect absolution.
"I really haven't a minute to spare," said he, and went upstairs with her to the second-floor.
By the time they got there Elsie had resumed her self-possession.
The doctor, for all his detached and frigid poses, was on occasion capable, like nearly every man, of being as irrational as a woman. On this occasion he was guilty of a perfectly indefensible prejudice against both Elsie and Joe. He had a prejudice against Elsie because he was convinced that had it not been for her affair with Joe, Joe would still have been in his service. And he was prejudiced against Joe because he had suffered much from a whole series of Joe's successors. For the moment he was quite without a Joe. Also he resented Elsie having a secret sick man in the house—and that man Joe—and demanding so unexpectedly his attention when he was in a hurry and over-fatigued by the ills of the people of Clerkenwell. He would have justly contemned such prejudices in another, and especially in, for example, his wife; and it must be admitted he was not the god-like little being he thought he was. Fortunately Joe was in a state which made all equal before him.