"GOOD OLD JANE," SHE SAID, "I DO ENJOY TALKING TO YOU."
"Good old Jane," she said. "I do enjoy talking to you, you are so deliciously unconventional." Then more soberly, "It is not fair that you should think I do not take proper care of Deryck and do not suffer during his absences. I go through perfect agonies of mind during the long hours of the night, when he is tearing down from Scotland by the mail train. I keep waking and thinking how bumpy it must be to lie along the seat of a railway carriage. He never will take a sleeper. And I lie and think of all the signal-men who hold his life in their hands, and hope they don't drink." Flower's voice trembled with emotion. "After reading about all those fearful railway smashes lately, I wrote on one of his visiting cards: In case of accident, wire at once to Mrs. Deryck Brand, Wimpole Street, London, W. I put it into his pocketbook, and it comforts me to know it is always upon him."
The lovely eyes of the doctor's wife were wet. Her lashes glistened in the firelight. The baby's godmother stooped and took up the poker, then laid it down again, unused.
"Well, Flower," she said at length, very deliberately, "and suppose an accident happened and they wired to you? What would you do?"
"Do?" exclaimed the doctor's wife, her lovely eyes dilating. "Why, go to him, of course!"
"But suppose nurse happened to be out? Or you had people coming to tea? Or you had promised the children—"