“No,” said he, “but you’ve done as bad. Yesterday at the trial you gave away your pal.”
“Don’t rake all that up again,” I expostulated. “I lost my head. I got excited, and I explained it all to you yesterday.”
“Ay,” the Doc. teased, “and it was that same explanation that kept me awake last night. You’re a queer sort of man to lose your head at a trial, you that’s been a magistrate in Burma since Heaven knows when.”
“It was so sudden, Doc.”
“Maybe. But if you cut your finger now, and suddenly asked me to bandage it, d’you think I’d lose my head? Why, it’s my work! Sudden or slow, it’s all the same to me. And sudden or slow, your work’s all the same to you. You didn’t lose your head!”
“Then I must be a souper,” I sighed.
“You’re not,” he said. “I know you better.”
I sat silent.
“Besides,” he went on, “Hill and you were hobnobbing together this morning. I saw you—laughing fit to burst, an’ as thick as thieves.”
“Perhaps he has forgiven me,” I suggested.