“Yes, Mr Trethick,” said Mrs Rumsey, pitifully, “indeed they are young Turks; but won’t you sit down?”
“Don’t let me disturb you, Miss Mullion,” he cried.
“Oh, I’m going, Mr Trethick,” said Madge, giving Mrs Rumsey a wistful look, which she interpreted aright, and acted accordingly.
“How is Mr Tregenna?” she said to her husband.
“Tregenna? Oh, ah, yes, to be sure! I had forgotten him. He’s all right again. Called me up in the middle of the night; said he was dying. Fit of indigestion; lives too well. I am always telling him so. He’s getting a liver as bad as old Paul. He works it too hard, and then it strikes, and telegraphs messages all over the body even to the toes, and then there’s a riot, for all the other organs strike too.”
“Then he was not seriously ill, papa?” said Mrs Rumsey, after another glance from Madge.
“Not he. Guilty conscience, perhaps. Sent for me for nothing. I told him he’d cry ‘Wolf!’ once too often, and I shouldn’t go.”
As Madge heard this she glided out of the room, and made her way unperceived to the front, and out into the street, in sublime unconsciousness that Miss Pavey was at her window, with a a very shabby little tortoise-shell-covered opera-glass, by means of which she had been intently watching the doctor’s house.
“Ah, me! Poor Rhoda!” she said to herself; “but it’s not for me to say any thing, only to pity the poor deluded girl. Oh, these men, these men!”
Meanwhile, after a few words to his guest, Dr Rumsey turned an eye to business.