“Even if my brother had not been at the moment so ill as to be mentally unhinged,” said Mrs. Stratton, “you must agree that the case is most peculiar. Here am I, his own sister, with children of my own more or less of Rose’s age, the properly equipped and natural person to bring up this motherless and fatherless child, and instead she is left to the tender mercies of a young man—and an unmarried man—whose only claim is that he lived next door.”
“Not his only claim,” I suggested. “It is something to have known the family for many years and to have brought the child into the world.”
“Mere accidents of adjacency and profession,” said Mrs. Stratton.
I granted that, but added that chance could rarely be separated from destiny.
Mrs. Stratton hastened to assure me that she had no patience with mystical balderdash. In any case it was absurd that a busy unmarried doctor should be selected to train an orphan—and a female orphan at that—when the orphan’s own aunt was not only ready to take over the duty but had been in the dead man’s mind. She was convinced that ninety-nine out of every hundred men in my position would have the grace—the humanity—to stand aside and give close relationship precedence. She was also convinced that no decently-honest judge, if there were such a person, would hesitate to set the will aside and give her the custody of her own flesh and blood.
I doubted if the phrase “own flesh and blood” could be applied properly to nieces.
“It’s near enough,” said Mrs. Stratton. “There’s no need to quibble about it. But to return to the question of a girl being entrusted to a young unmarried man, I consider it unsuitable in every way. It’s not nice,” she went on. “It’s not proper. It’s a kind of a scandal. The idea of a bachelor bringing up a girl!”
I pointed out that I was a little different from most men in being a doctor.
“A doctor!” she exclaimed, as though annihilating at one sniff not only every pretension I might have cherished to know anything of the healing art, but every vestige of discretion too, and all my predecessors from Galen onwards.
“At any rate,” I said mildly, “I have been practising in this neighbourhood for a good many years and I succeeded a highly-esteemed father.”