“Oh, dear! oh, dear! oh, dear!” sighed the old lady. “It’s very hard when I’d lay down my life to save him, and me seeing him peek and pine away and growing so weak. I know it was that skating accident as did it. Him nearly a quarter of an hour under the ice, and the receiving-house doctor working for an hour before he could bring him to.”
“I’m afraid that was the start of his illness, Mrs Dunn.”
“I’m sure of it, doctor. Such a fine lad as he was, and he has never been the same since. What am I to do? Nobody takes any interest in the poor boy but me.”
“Well, I should write at once to the professor and tell him that Mr Lawrence is in a critical condition, and also to his father’s executor, Mr Burne, and insist upon my patient being taken for the winter to a milder clime.”
“And they won’t stir a peg. I believe they’ll both be glad to hear that he is dead, for neither of them cares a straw about him, poor boy.”
There had been a double knock while this conversation was going on in Guildford Street, Russell Square, and after the pattering of steps on the oil-cloth in the hall the door was opened, and the murmur of a gruff voice was followed by the closing of the front door, and then a series of three sounds, as if someone was beginning to learn a deep brass instrument, and Mrs Dunn started up.
“It’s Mr Burne. Now, doctor, you tell him yourself.”
Directly after, a keen-eyed grey little gentleman of about fifty was shown in, with a snuff-box in one hand, a yellow silk handkerchief in the other, and he looked sharply about as he shook hands in a hurried way, and then sat down.
“Hah! glad to see you, doctor. Now about this client of yours. Patient I mean. You’re not going to let him slip through your fingers?”
“I’m sorry to say, Mr Burne—”