"It's rum, isn't it?" said Ranny. He was apparently absorbed in tying the strings of his sleeping-suit into loops of absolutely even length. "But he always was that mysterious kind of bird."
He began to step slowly backward as he buttoned up his jacket. Then, by way of throwing off the care that oppressed him, and lightening somewhat Mr. Ponting's burden, he ran forward and took a flying leap over the Baby's cot into his own bed.
Mr. Ponting looked, if anything, a little graver. "I wouldn't do that, if I were you," he said.
"Why not?" said Ranny over his blankets, snuggling comfortably.
"Oh, I don't know," said Mr. Ponting, vaguely.
In a day or two Ranny himself knew.
His arrangements had carried him well on into October. In the last week of that month, on a Tuesday evening, he appeared at the Regent Street Polytechnic, where he had not been seen since far back in the last year. It was not at the Gymnasium that he now presented himself, but at the door of that room where every Tuesday evening, from seven-thirty to eight-thirty, a qualified practitioner was in attendance.
It was the first time that Ransome had availed himself of this privilege conferred on him by the Poly.
He said he wouldn't keep the medical man a minute.
But the medical man kept Ranny many minutes, thumping, sounding, intimately and extensively overhauling him. For more minutes than Ranny at all liked, he played about him with a stethoscope. Then he fired off what Ranny supposed to be the usual questions.