Peter Ramsay put down the letter with a low whistle and stood staring at his half-packed portmanteau. Then he took up the letter again and re-read it.
There was no doubt about it! The governing body of St. Helena's Hospital for Children offered him the appointment of resident physician at a salary of £600 a year.
But where the deuce was the hospital?
Egworth. That was one of the suburbs of Blackborough; the most desirable suburb, for it stood on a hill, and so above the smoke-pall of the factory city. But he remembered no hospital there. Once upon a time some speculator had built a huge framework of a place that was to have been a hotel, or a hydropathic, or something of the sort, on the site of the old manor house at the very top of the rise. He remembered Phipp's Folly, as it was called, with its cold deserted look-out of roughly-glazed windows; but of hospitals--nothing.
It must be some small place. Yet still £600 a year was liberal.
"If you would prefer to see the hospital before making a decision the authorities will be happy to show you over, and I may mention that the governing body will be in committee on the 18th of this month, and could give you an interview."
Thus wrote the secretary.
The 18th? That was to-day. The letter had been delayed, partly because he had changed his lodgings, partly because he had run out of town from Saturday to Monday to see a friend before leaving for Vienna. Of course he could put off his journey for a day or two and still arrive easily before the date he had originally fixed.
On the other hand, as it was but a two hours' run to Blackborough, why should he not go down by the 12 o'clock luncheon train, and be back in time to start, if need be, by the Oriental express in the evening? No reason at all. He would do this, and he might find time, even if St. Helena's proved to be a fraud, to look in at St. Peter's into the bargain.
"St. Helena's Hospital," said the cabman at the station confidentially, "that'll be the no'o one as the Syndicate 'as bin makin' out o' Phipp's Folly."