“You don’t mean,” said Miss Climpson, “that he would refuse a certificate and cause all that trouble, just to annoy the nurse. Surely no doctor would dare to do that.”
“Of course not,” said Mrs. Peasgood, “and nobody with a grain of sense would suppose it for a moment.”
“Thank you very much, Mrs. Peasgood,” cried Miss Murgatroyd, “thank you very much, I’m sure—”
“I say what I think,” said Mrs. Peasgood.
“Then I’m glad I haven’t such uncharitable thoughts,” said Miss Murgatroyd.
“I don’t think your own observations are so remarkable for their charity,” retorted Mrs. Peasgood.
Fortunately, at this moment Miss Murgatroyd, in her agitation, gave a vicious tweak to the wrong needle and dropped twenty-nine stitches at once. The Vicar’s wife, scenting battle from afar, hurried over with a plate of scones, and helped to bring about a diversion. To her, Miss Climpson, doggedly sticking to her mission in life, broached the subject of the house in Wellington Avenue.
“Well, I don’t know, I’m sure,” replied Mrs. Tredgold, “but there’s Miss Whittaker just arrived. Come over to my corner and I’ll introduce her to you, and you can have a nice chat about it. You will like each other so much, she is such a keen worker. Oh! and Mrs. Peasgood, my husband is so anxious to have a word with you about the choirboys’ social. He is discussing it now with Mrs. Findlater. I wonder if you’d be so very good as to come and give him your opinion? He values it so much.”
Thus tactfully the good lady parted the disputants and, having deposited Mrs. Peasgood safely under the clerical wing, towed Miss Climpson away to an arm-chair near the tea-table.
“Dear Miss Whittaker, I so want you to know Miss Climpson. She is a near neighbour of yours—in Nelson Avenue, and I hope we shall persuade her to make her home among us.”