There was a short pause, during which Maud occupied her mouth with sea-trout and her mind with the question as to whether she should tell Thurso that Mr. Cochrane was a Christian Scientist. But his remark that it was not his plan to proselytise decided her against doing so. Then Thurso spoke again.
“Do you know, to-day is the first on which I haven’t felt absolutely swamped and water-logged with depression and anxiety?” he said. “There has been no fresh case since morning, and Duncan’s wife, who, like Sandie, was almost despaired of, has taken a sudden inexplicable turn for the better. She was dying of sheer exhaustion from fever, and now all day she has been gaining strength—gaining it quickly, too, though you would have said there was no strength left. I saw Duncan this evening. He—really, I wondered whether he had been drinking.”
“Drinking?” asked Maud. “Why, he is a tee-totaller!”
“The worst sort of drunkard,” remarked Thurso rather cynically.
“Oh, don’t be cheap!”
Thurso looked up at her, and then nodded.
“Quite right,” he said; “it’s a pity. Sorry.”
“You old darling! But Duncan’s as sober as I am. Soberer. Go on. It interests me.”
“Well, it all leads back to Mr. Cochrane again,” he said. “Don’t interrupt. I looked in to-night, as I told you, and there was Duncan sitting by his wife’s bedside, nursing the baby, who was, with extraordinary gurgles, trying to swarm up his beard. And his wife lay there, different, changed, with life instead of death in her face. But fancy bringing a baby into a room where there is typhoid! So I got Duncan and the child out, and cursed him, and told him that his wife was really on the mend, as the nurse had just told me. I thought he would like to know that, but apparently he had known it all day. Our Mr. Cochrane had told him this morning that his wife was getting better all the time.”
“Yes, I heard him tell him,” said Maud.