“Ay, lass, and would if it were ten toimes wurse. Get ye into thy room, and go down on thy knees, and pray God to keep John Stukeley alive and clear headed till oi coomes back again.”
It was many years since Luke Marner's legs had carried him so fast as they now did into Marsden. The driving rain and hail which beat against him seemed unheeded as he ran down the hill at the top of his speed. He stopped at the doctor's and went in. Two or three minutes after the arrival of this late visitor Dr. Green's housekeeper was astonished at hearing the bell ring violently. On answering the bell she was ordered to arouse John, who had already gone to bed, and to tell him to put the horse into the gig instantly.
“Not on such a night as this, doctor! sureley you are not a-going out on such a night as this!”
“Hold your tongue, woman, and do as you are told instantly,” the doctor said with far greater spirit than usual, for his housekeeper was, as a general thing, mistress of the establishment.
With an air of greatly offended dignity she retired to carry out his orders. Three minutes later the doctor ran out of his room as he heard the man servant descending the stairs.
“John,” he said, “I am going on at once to Mr. Thompson's; bring the gig round there. I shan't want you to go further with me. Hurry up, man, and don't lose a moment—it is a matter of life and death.”
A quarter of an hour later Dr. Green, with Mr. Thompson by his side, drove off through the tempest toward Varley.
The next morning, as Ned was at breakfast, the doctor was announced.
“What a pestilently early hour you breakfast at, Ned! I was not in bed till three o'clock, and I scarcely seemed to have been asleep an hour when I was obliged to get up to be in time to catch you before you were off.”
“That is hard on you indeed, doctor,” Ned said, smiling; “but why this haste? Have you got some patient for whom you want my help? You need not have got up so early for that, you know. You could have ordered anything you wanted for him in my name. You might have been sure I should have honored the bill. But what made you so late last night? You were surely never out in such a gale!”