The day after that, being, I believe, the eighth of my illness, I got up at eleven o’clock and put on a pair of trousers under my dressing-gown. McMeekin, backed by the nurse, insisted on my sending for a barber to shave me. I did not like the barber, for, like all his tribe, he was garrulous and I had to appeal to the nurse to stop him talking. Afterward I was very glad I had endured him. Lalage and Hilda called on me at two o’clock, and I should not have liked them to see me in the state I was in before the barber came. They both looked fresh and vigorous. Electioneering evidently agreed with them.
“We looked in,” said Lalage, “because we thought you might want to be cheered up a bit. You can’t have many visitors now that poor Tithers is gone.”
“Dead?”
“Oh, no, not yet at least, and we hope he won’t. Tithers means well and I daresay it’s not his fault if he don’t speak the truth.”
“They’ve put him in prison, I suppose. I hardly thought they’d allow him to chop up Selby-Harrison in the College Park.”
Hilda gaped at me. Lalage went over to the nurse and whispered something in her ear. The nurse shook her head and said that my temperature was normal.
“If you’re not raving,” said Lalage, “you’re deliberately talking nonsense. I don’t know what you mean, nor does Hilda.”
“It ought to be fairly obvious,” I said, “that I’m alluding to Mr. Titherington’s attempt to find out Hilda’s surname from young Selby-Harrison.”
Hilda giggled convulsively. Then she got out her pocket handkerchief and choked.
“Tithers,” said Lalage, “is past caring about anybody’s name. He’s got influenza. It came on him the night before last at twelve o’clock. He’s pretty bad.”