She shook her head solemnly and disappeared from the window.
Abner, exhilarated with the night air, ran on to the doctor’s house. This gentleman appeared to resent his call. Abner was told to wait below so that he might carry the bag. He stood there in a garden heavy with the perfume of stocks. In the meadows along the Stour a corncrake was calling. He wondered what kind of bird it was, and whether it was easy to kill. He didn’t mind how long the doctor kept him waiting.
On the way back to Hackett’s Cottages Dr Moorhouse spoke very little. He asked Abner the kind of questions he usually put to young people, and grunted in reply, as if he hadn’t heard what Abner said.
‘Are you John Fellows’s son?’ he asked. And then: ‘How old are you?’
When Abner said that he was going in seventeen, he grunted. It scarcely seemed possible that more than sixteen years had passed since, in the same small house of Hackett’s Cottages, he had ushered this tall youth into the world. It filled him with a kind of discontent to realise that for all these years he had been moving in the same groove, in a vicious circle that had brought him back once more to this identical point. Only it hadn’t been so hard to turn out at night sixteen years ago. A dog’s life! People didn’t realise it. There was Ingleby, the chemist, a sensible man in most things, fool enough to make his only son a doctor!
When they reached Hackett’s Cottages they found the door of number eleven open and a light shining in it. John Fellows came out to meet them and insisted on shaking hands with the doctor. It was obvious that he had been sampling the bottle of brandy that is always in evidence on these occasions.
‘She’s all right,’ he said. ‘She’s all right, doctor. A tough wench she is! Tougher than the other one.’
He turned on Abner. ‘Get the fire lit. Sharp, now! Else I’ll drap thee one. Fill the big kettle. Plenty of hot water. That’s it, isn’t it, doctor? I know . . . don’t I, doctor? . . . I know.’
Somebody came limping downstairs. It was Mrs Moseley.
‘What . . .?’ shouted the doctor. ‘What’s the meaning of this? What do you mean by it, woman? Didn’t I tell you to stay in bed till I let you out? Of all the damned pig-headed foolishness . . ‘