"You can see him on Mondays between ten and twelve."
"The day after to-morrow?" cried Regina in despair.
"Yes, between ten and twelve, the day after to-morrow."
"But I may come to-morrow without an order?"
"Yes. Friends and relatives can visit patients on Sundays between nine and four."
The man's imperturbability was exasperating, and Regina, who was not patient, felt that if she stayed any longer she should try to take him by the collar, shake him, and force her way in. But she was much too sensible to do anything so rash. There was no choice but to go away.
"Thank you," she said, as she turned to go down the steps.
"You are welcome," the man answered very civilly, for he was watching her and was reflecting that he had never seen such a face and figure before.
Some hours later, when the police communicated with the Superintendent, and when he found that a woman had come to the door who said that she knew the waif, and had been sent away, he called the orderly who had been on duty several hard names in his heart for having followed the rule of the hospital so scrupulously. He was an antediluvian, he was a case of arrested mental development, he was an ichthyosaurus, he was a new kind of idiot, he was a monumental fool, he was the mammoth ass reported to have been seen by a mediæval traveller in the desert, that was forty cubits high, and whose braying was like the blast of ten thousand trumpets. The Superintendent wished he had time to select more choice epithets for that excellent orderly, but the police seemed so particularly curious about the new patient that he had no leisure for thinking out what he wanted.
Nevertheless, the man had done his duty and nothing more nor less according to the rules, and Regina was forced to go away discomfited.