The Squire had not been going on straight himself just then, and had bumped up against a foot-passenger who was hurrying along. It was Pitt, the surgeon. After a few words of greeting, the Squire excused his flurry by telling him where he had come from.
“Been there!” exclaimed Pitt, bursting into a laugh. “Wish you joy, sir! We call it Benevolence Hall.”
“And a very good name, too,” said the Squire. “Such men ought to be canonized, Pitt.”
“Hope they will be?” answered Pitt in a curious kind of tone. “I can’t stop now, Mr. Todhetley; am on my way to a consultation.”
“He slips from one like an eel,” cried the Squire, looking after the doctor as he hurried onwards: “I might have spoken to him about Mrs. Mapping. But my mind is at ease with regard to her, Johnny, now that these charitable men have the case in hand: and we shall be up again in a few weeks.”
III.
It was nearly two months before we were again in London, and winter weather: the same business, connected with a lawsuit, calling the Squire up.
“And now for Mrs. Mapping,” he said to me during the afternoon of the second day. So we went to Gibraltar Terrace.
“Yes, she is in her room,” said Miss Kester in a resentful tone, when she admitted us. “It is a good thing somebody’s come at last to see after her! I don’t care to have her alone here on my hands to die.”
“To die!” cried the Squire sharply, supposing the dressmaker spoke only in temper. “What is she dying of?”