“It is not necessary. You have only to say, 'Go.'”
“Oh, that would be rude. Could not you go without being told right out?”
“No, I could not. Miss Gale, I can't account for it, but there is some strange attraction. You hate me, and I fear you, yet I could follow you about like a dog. Let me sit here a little longer and see you work.”
Miss Gale leaned her head upon her hand, and contemplated him at great length. Finally she adopted a cat-like course. “No,” said she, at last; “I am going my rounds: you can come with me, if I am so attractive.”
He said he should be proud, and she put on her hat in thirty seconds.
They walked together in silence. He felt as if he were promenading a tiger cat, that might stop any moment to fall upon him.
She walked him into a cottage: there was a little dead wood burning on that portion of the brick floor called the hearth. A pale old man sat close to the fire, in a wooden armchair. She felt his pulse, and wrote him a prescription.
“To Mr. Vizard's housekeeper, Vizard Court:
“Please give the bearer two pounds of good roast beef or mutton, not salted, and one pint port wine,