“She would not have him near her. After his first visit she denied herself to him all the time. He used to talk to me about her, he could never understand it, he was not used to that sort of treatment, he is a tremendous favourite about here.”
“What did she say of him?”
“That he grinned like a Cheshire cat, talked in clichés, rubbed his hands and seemed glad when she suffered. He has a very cheerful bedside manner; most people like it.”
“I quite understand. I won’t have him. Mind that; don’t send him to see me, because I won’t see him. I’d rather put up with you.” I have explained I was beyond convention. He really tried hard to persuade me, urged Dr. Lansdowne’s degrees and qualifications, his seniority. I grew angry in the end.
“Surely I need not have either of you if I don’t want to. I suppose there are other doctors in the neighbourhood.”
He gave me a list of the medical men practising in and about Pineland; it was not at all badly done, he praised everybody yet made me see them clearly. In the end I told him I would choose my own medical attendant when I wanted one.
“Am I dismissed, then?” he asked.
“Have you ever been summoned?” I answered in the same tone.
“Seriously now, I’d like to be of use to you if you’d let me.”
“In order to retain the entrée to the house where the wonderful Margaret moved and had her being?”