SIR PATRICK [drily] It’s a little hard on a lad to be killed because his wife has too high an opinion of him. Fortunately few of us are in any danger of that.
Sir Ralph comes from the inner room and hastens between them, humanely concerned, but professionally elate and communicative.
B. B. Ah, here you are, Ridgeon. Paddy’s told you, of course.
RIDGEON. Yes.
B. B. It’s an enormously interesting case. You know, Colly, by Jupiter, if I didnt know as a matter of scientific fact that I’d been stimulating the phagocytes, I should say I’d been stimulating the other things. What is the explanation of it, Sir Patrick? How do you account for it, Ridgeon? Have we over-stimulated the phagocytes? Have they not only eaten up the bacilli, but attacked and destroyed the red corpuscles as well? a possibility suggested by the patient’s pallor. Nay, have they finally begun to prey on the lungs themselves? Or on one another? I shall write a paper about this case.
Walpole comes back, very serious, even shocked. He comes between B. B. and Ridgeon.
WALPOLE. Whew! B. B.: youve done it this time.
B. B. What do you mean?
WALPOLE. Killed him. The worst case of neglected blood-poisoning I ever saw. It’s too late now to do anything. He’d die under the anaesthetic.
B. B. [offended] Killed! Really, Walpole, if your monomania were not well known, I should take such an expession very seriously.