"D'you mean you don't know what's happened to the horrible creature?" she exclaimed vexedly.
"That's just what I do mean, Mrs. Crofton. That smart little fellow just spirited the creature away."
As he spoke, sitting with his back to the window, he was observing his pretty patient very closely. She had reddened angrily and was biting her lips. What a little vixen she was, to be sure! And suddenly she saw what he was thinking.
"I'd like to put a question to you, Mrs. Crofton."
"Do!" she insisted, but his question, when it came, displeased her.
"Is it true that that wasn't the first time you'd had an unpleasant experience with an animal at Old Place?"
Dr. O'Farrell had not meant to ask his patient this question to-day, but he really felt curious to know the truth concerning something Godfrey Radmore had told him that morning.
"Yes," she answered, slowly, "the first time I was in Old Place, Timmy Tosswill's dog frightened me out of my wits."
"That's very strange," said the doctor, "Flick's such a mild-mannered dog."
Enid Crofton lifted herself up from her reclining position. "Dr. O'Farrell! I wouldn't say so to anyone but you, but don't you think there's something uncanny about Timmy Tosswill? My little maid told me last night that the village people think he's a kind of—well, I don't know what to call it!—a kind of boy-witch. She says they're awfully afraid of him, that they think he can do a mischief to people he doesn't like." As he said nothing for a moment, she added rather defiantly:—"I daresay you think it is absurd that I should listen to village gossip, but the truth is, I've a kind of horror of the child. He terrifies me!"