“Nonsense!” returned Bevere. “I don’t want Pitt here.”
“I say nonsense to that,” rejoined Scott. “Who’s Pitt?—he won’t hurt you. No good to think you can shut yourself up in a nutshell—with such an arm as this, and—and—” he glanced at me, as if he would say, “and now Ludlow has found you out.”
“You can do as much for the arm as Pitt can,” said Bevere, fractiously.
“Perhaps I could: but I don’t mean to try. I tell you, Bevere, I do not like the look of it,” repeated Scott. “What’s more, I, not being a qualified practitioner yet, would not take the responsibility.”
“Well, I will go to Pitt to-morrow if I’m no better and can get my coat on,” conceded Bevere. “Lizzie, where’s the other bandage?”
“Oh, I left it in my room,” said Lizzie; and she ran up the stairs in search of it.
So she lived there! Was it her home, I wondered; or Bevere’s; or their home conjointly? The two might have vowed eternal friendship and set up housekeeping together on a platonic footing. Curious problems do come into fashion in the great cities of this go-ahead age; perhaps that one had.
Scott finished dressing the arm, giving the patient sundry cautions meanwhile; and I got up to leave. Lizzie had stepped outside and was leaning over the little wooden entrance-gate, chanting a song to herself and gazing up and down the quiet road.
“What am I to say to your mother?” I said to Bevere in a low tone. “You knew I had to write to her.”
“Oh, say I am all right,” he answered. “I have written to her myself now, and had two letters from her.”