She whisked off, leaving an astonished man vaguely wondering from what source Maria had received this positive information. He closed the shop, and then ran home. The doctor was leaving the cottage. Again Quinney stammered out:
"Is it over?"
"Just begun," the doctor replied. Quinney hated him because he looked so blandly self-possessed and indifferent.
"Mrs. Biddlecombe is with her," continued the doctor, in the same suavely impassive tone. "They will send for me later. Good-afternoon!"
Quinney wanted to reply, "Oh, you go to blazes! I shall send for somebody else; a man, not a machine," but he merely glared at the doctor, and nodded. Pelting upstairs, two steps at a time, he encountered Mrs. Biddlecombe upon the landing, with her forefinger on her lip.
"Not so much noise, please!" she commanded, with the air and deportment of an empress. It struck Quinney that she had expanded enormously. Also she was dressed for the part, wearing an imposing dressing-gown, and felt slippers. Quinney had an odd feeling that she was enjoying herself at Susie's expense. Secretly he was furious, because she seemed to block the entrance to his room. He tried to push past her.
"Where are you going, Joseph?"
He was quite confounded, but from long habit he replied in his jerky, whimsical way:
"Into my room o' course. Where did you think I was going? Into the coal cellar?"
Mrs. Biddlecombe answered with majesty, not budging: