Cuthbert was really glad of the day's rest, and felt all the better for it. On the following morning Harford's name was brought in just as breakfast was over.
"It is the man who was Brander's clerk, Doctor," he said. "I met him in town and he has come down to see me on a little matter of business."
"Take him into the consulting-room, Cuthbert, I am not likely to have any patients come for the next half-hour."
"That settles it, sir," the clerk said, when he heard from Cuthbert of the date which he had obtained from the doctor, "though I cannot swear to a day."
"I hear that Brander comes to his office about eleven o'clock. He is sure to be there, for I hear that Jackson has gone away for a few days. I will go at half-past. If you will call here for me at that time we will walk there together. I will go in by myself. I will get you to call two or three minutes after me, so that I can call you into his private room if necessary."
"You have soon done with him," the doctor said, as Cuthbert returned to the breakfast-room.
"I have given him some instructions and he will call again presently," Cuthbert replied. "By the way, we were talking of Brander; how have his two girls turned out? I mean the two younger ones; I met Mary in Paris during the siege."
"Ah. I heard from Brander that she was shut up there, and I was wondering whether you had run against her. He is very savage at what he calls her vagaries. Did she get through the starvation all right?"
"Oh, yes, she was living in a French family, and like most of the middle class they had laid in a fair stock of provisions when it became evident the place was to be besieged, and though the supply of meat was stinted I don't think there was any lack of other things."
"I liked Mary," the doctor said, warmly; "she was a straightforward, sensible girl, till she got that craze about woman's rights in her mind; in all other respects she was a very nice girl, and differed from the rest of them as much as chalk from cheese."