“Up-to-date?” She barely winced. “I take it that you are speaking of him professionally. Surgery, I am told, has made immense strides, but medicine remains, doesn’t it, very much where it was?”
“Grimshaw is a surgeon, Lady Selina. And up-to-date in that. For the rest I know nothing about him except this. In his two letters to me he expressed himself modestly. I should imagine that he will give undivided energies to his profession.”
“He will have very little to do, it seems to me.”
“Um. As to that I am not so sure.”
“My people are wonderfully healthy.”
“Some of them.”
Lady Selina’s eyes wandered to the lawn; through the open windows floated much laughter. Euphrosyne is surely the sister of Hygeia. And at that moment a patriarch was approaching, Nicodemus Burble, past eighty-one, and able to do a day’s work in the fields. The lady of the manor said triumphantly:
“Ah, there’s a fine specimen.”
Nicodemus halted at the open window and touched his cap.
“Well, Nicodemus, how are you?”