Without giving the doctor time to answer, she went on: “No change in poor Emily, I suppose?” She smiled disagreeably. “I expect you’d like to have ten other patients like her, Dr. Maclean?”
At once he carried the war into the enemy’s country.
“Did Dr. Prince like that type of tiresome, cantankerous, impossible-to-please patient?”
“I know I was glad of them.”
“Very well for you who had the spending of the fees and none of the work!”
They generally sparred like this, jokingly in a sense, but with a sort of unpleasant edge to their banter.
“I don’t suppose Emily will ever get better—till she dies of old age,” laughed Miss Prince.
“As a matter of fact, she’s markedly less well than she was last year.”
Dr. Maclean didn’t know what provoked him to say that, though it was true that he had thought Mrs. Garlett rather less well than usual these last few weeks.
“It’s strange that everything in nature, having performed its work, dies, and that only we poor human beings linger on long after any usefulness we ever had in the world has gone,” said Miss Prince musingly.