“He was so ill, sir, that I thought he was dying then. Some flyman he knew had driven him to Godstowe for the sake of the air.”
“But what’s your motive, may I ask, for going to sit with him?” He had a way of laying emphasis on certain of his words.
“There’s no motive, sir: except that he is lonely and dying.”
The doctor looked at me for what seemed ten minutes. “What is this sick man’s address, pray?”
I told him the address in Stagg’s Entry; and he wrote it down, telling me to present myself again before him the following morning.
That day, I met Sophie Chalk; her husband was with her. She nodded and seemed gay as air: he looked dark and sullen as he took off his hat. I carried the news into college.
“Sophie Chalk has her husband down, Tod.”
“Queen Anne’s dead,” retorted he.
“Oh, you knew it!” And I might have guessed that he did by his not having spent the past evening in High Street, but in a fellow’s rooms at Oriel. And he was as cross as two sticks.