The Doctor interrupted with a guffah. "Come, Mrs. Masters, we need not beat about the bush. I rather fancy you are aware of our relationship. Did you find her agreeable?"
"Pretty middling," said Mrs. Masters, reluctantly, "although at first I was put out by her manners. Such airs these modern young women give themselves. But she got round me in the end with her pretty ways, and I found myself taking 'er all round the 'ouse, which of course I ought not to 'ave done without your permission."
"Tell me," said the Doctor, without moving a muscle in his face, "was she satisfied with her tour of my premises?"
"There now!" exclaimed Mrs. Masters, hastily arranging an antimacassar on the back of a chair, "I won't tell you that, because, of course, I don't know."
She retreated towards the door.
"But did she leave any message?" enquired the Doctor, fixing her with his eye-glass.
"Botheration!" ejaculated Mrs. Masters, in aggrieved tones, "now you've asked me and I've got to tell you. I wanted to keep it back. Oh, I do hope you're not going to be disappointed. I'm sure she didn't really mean it."
"What did she say," demanded the Doctor, irritably.
"She says to me, she says, 'Tell him there's nothing doing.'"
There was a pause. Mrs. Masters drew in her lip and folded her arms stiffly. The Doctor stared hard at her for a moment, and almost betrayed himself. Then he threw back his head and laughed with the air of a man to whom all issues of life, great and small, had become the object of a graduated hilarity. "Then upon some other lady will fall the supreme honour," he observed.