"Take some," said the dying man. "Where do you keep the key?"
She unlocked the drawer, and whisked out again. There had been a rustle of bank-notes.
"A good sort, Julia," he repeated; "looks after everything. I must give her something, Davie.... There's my scarf-pin somewhere about—it'll do for her tie."
David left him soon, mindful of the nurse's instructions, and at nine o'clock the doctor paid another visit.
"I should like to have a physician down from town, if you don't mind," stammered the lad; "the best we can get."
"Just as you please," said the practitioner, stiffly. "But the treatment in these cases——"
David felt shy, and was annoyed with himself for being so. The sense, inherited and acquired, of racial inferiority cowed him as he opposed his opinion to the authoritative stranger's.
"Yes, if you don't mind, I should like a physician," he insisted, after an inward struggle. Embarrassment lent a ring of defiance to his voice, and the doctor thought him a cub.
So the telegram was written, and the cub went out with it himself.
When he returned to the sitting-room, Julia was playing cards for coppers with a faded woman in shabby black, who was presented to him as "Mrs. Hayes." A brandy bottle and a syphon stood between the glasses on the table; and when Mrs. Hayes won a shilling she tittered: "Lucky at love, unlucky at cards, my dear!" As she put on her bonnet, she gave a start. "There! I meant to 'ave bought sixpenn'orth, against my being bad again in the night, dear," she exclaimed; "the pubs 'll be shut by now!" And then her hostess summoned the waiter, and Mrs. Hayes carried another bottle home under her cape.