"Well, I shall be up in a day or two, William, and I'll see if I can't wipe your eye!"
"I hope you will, sir, I'm sure. There's quite a lot of mallard about, early as it is."
"I'll get among them soon, Tumpany!"
"Yessir—the Mistress I think, sir, and the doctor."
Tumpany's ears were keen, like those of most wildfowlers,—he heard voices coming along the passage towards the bedroom.
The door opened and Morton Sims came in with Mary.
He shook hands with Gilbert, admired Tumpany's leash of duck, and then, left alone with the poet, sat down upon the bed.
The two men regarded each other with interest. They were both "personalities" and both of them made their mark in their several ways.
"Good heavens!" the doctor was thinking. "What a brilliant brain's hidden behind those lint bandages! This is the man who can make the throat swell with sorrow and the heart leap high with hope! With all my learning and success, I can only bring comfort to people's bowels or cure insomnia. This fellow here can heal souls—like a priest! Even for me—now and then—he has unlocked the gates of fairyland."
"Good Lord!" Gilbert said to himself. "What wouldn't I give to be a fellow like this fellow. He is great. He can put a drug into one's body and one's soul awakes! He's got a magic wand. He waves it, and sanity returns. He pours out of a bottle and blind eyes once more see God, dull ears hear music! I go and get drunk at Amberleys' house and cringe before a Toftrees, Mon Dieu! This man can never go away from a house without leaving a sense of loss behind him."