“She looked this morning as if she’d had no sleep at all.”
Dr. Maclean got up; he came over to where his wife was sitting and patted her hand.
“To-day I received a sample of a new preparation of bromide and valerian with just a dash of chloral. I’ll try Jean with that to-night, and if it gives her a good night I’ll wire to London for a bottle of the stuff to come down by train parcel to-morrow. We’ve got to keep her going these next few weeks.”
“I’ve such a horror of drugs,” said Mrs. Maclean in a low voice. “I thought you had, too, Jock?”
“So I have, but it’s quite an exceptional case. For the matter of that, I only wish I could send the poor child to sleep till the whole of this painful business is over. I’ve sometimes thought what a fine thing it will be when science is able to suspend a man’s thinking faculties for a much longer period than for just a few hours——”
“I don’t want to live in that time,” said Mrs. Maclean stubbornly.
“I daresay you don’t, but a good many people would be thankful to be able to take a dose of—shall we say ‘forgetfulness?’—through their worst time of sorrow, and, above all, of anxiety.”
“Has any one spoken to you of the case to-day?” she asked.
“Every one has spoken to me of it! I was even stopped in the road three or four times, and not very far from our gate I had quite a talk with a newspaper man—in fact I wonder Jean and Elsie didn’t meet him. He admitted he’d been hanging about all the afternoon.”
“They did meet him—he said he came from the biggest of the London press agencies. But of course they hurried indoors and refused to have anything to say to him.”