“He’s desolated not to see you, as the French people say; but hist, me dear, there’s some one at the door. Maybe it’s her ladyship. I’ll go into this adjacent room.”
“No, no; stay here,” exclaimed Vivienne with an apprehensive glance at the narrow doorway leading to her sleeping apartment. “It does not matter who comes.”
“It’s only I,” said a meek voice, and Dr. Camperdown’s sandy head appeared, shortly followed by the rest of his body.
Mrs. Macartney, not heeding Vivienne’s advice, had tried to enter the next room, and had become firmly wedged in the doorway. Dr. Camperdown was obliged to go to her assistance, and when he succeeded in releasing her she looked at him with such a variety of amusing expressions chasing themselves over her face that he grinned broadly and turned away.
“Who is this gentleman?” said Mrs. Macartney at last breathlessly, with gratitude, and yet with a certain repugnance to the physician on account of his ugly looks.
Vivienne performed the necessary introduction, and Mrs. Macartney ejaculated, “Ah, your doctor. Perhaps,” jocularly, “I may offer myself to him as a patient.” Then as Dr. Camperdown took Vivienne’s wrist in his hand she bent over him with an interested air and said, “It’s me flesh, doctor. I don’t know what to do about it. The heavens seem to rain it down upon me—flake upon flake, layer upon layer. I’ve been rubbed and tubbed, and grilled and stewed, and done Banting, and taken Anti-fats, and yet it goes on increasing. Every morning there’s more of it, and every evening it grows upon me. I have to swing and tumble and surge about me bed to get impetus enough to roll out; it’s awful, doctor!”
Vivienne listened to her in some surprise, for up to this she had not imagined that Mrs. Macartney felt the slightest uneasiness in regard to her encumbrance of flesh. But there was real anxiety in her tones now, and Vivienne listened with interest for the doctor’s reply.
“What do you eat?” he said abruptly, and with a swift glance at her smooth, fair expanse of cheek and chin.
“Three fairish meals a day,” she said, “and a supper at night.”
“How much do you walk?”