“If it was even a cup of tea,” he said, “it would be better than nothing. I’ve a terrible thirst on me.”
“Sorry,” said Dr. O’Grady, “but I’ve no tea either. Not a grain in the house since last Friday. I hope this will be a lesson to you, Doyle, and will teach you not to ballyrag your customers in future. But I don’t want to rub it in. Get on with your story.”
“It could be,” said Doyle, “that there’d be water in your pump. I’m not sure will I be able to speak much without I drink something.”
“The pump’s all right,” said Dr. O’Grady. “Just sit where you are for a moment and I’ll fetch you some water. It may give you typhoid. I wouldn’t drink it myself without boiling it, but that’s your look out.”
He left the moor and returned a few minutes later with a large tumbler of cold water. Doyle looked at it mournfully. He knew perfectly well that the doctor had both whisky and tea in the house, but he recognised the impossibility of getting either the one or the other. He raised the glass to his mouth.
“Glory be to God,” he said, “but it’s the first time I’ve wetted my lips with the same this twenty years!”
“It will do you a lot of good if it doesn’t give you typhoid,” said Dr. O’Grady. “How did you get so frightfully thirsty?”
The question was natural. Doyle drank the whole tumbler of water at a draught. There was no doubt that he had been very thirsty.
“Will you tell me now,” he said, “what had that one in the temper she was in?”
“Mrs. Ford,” said Dr. O’Grady, “was annoyed because she thought she wasn’t going to be given a chance of making herself agreeable to the Lord-Lieutenant.”