"When I was obliged to be. I'm getting old now, and my son has taken to the patients. Well, and who is it that is in urgent need of me? Your blooming self?"
"My blooming self is in no need of medical aid just now," replied Mr. Chandos, something constrained in his voice. "Will you take anything at once, doctor?"
"I'll see my patient first. It is my lady, I suppose?"
Mr. Chandos nodded.
"Ah," said the doctor, following him from the parlour, "I said, you may remember, that the time might come when you'd be glad of me at Chandos. No skill in these remote parts; a set of muffs, all; known to be."
Mr. Chandos echoed his laugh; and leading the way to his study, shut himself in with the doctor. Afterwards he took him up to the west wing.
Why should Mr. Chandos have denied that he was ill?—as by implication he certainly did—was the question that I kept asking myself. Later, when he came to the oak-parlour, I asked it of him.
"One patient is enough in a house," was all his answer. He had come down from the west wing grave, grave even to sadness.
"But—to imply that you were well—when you know what the other doctor said!"
"Hush! Don't allude to that. It was a painful episode, one that I like to be silent upon. The—the danger, as I thought it, passed with the day, you know."