"It's all the same to me," said accommodating Jan. "Whose will be this room, then?"
"Yours, to do as you please with, of course, so long as I am away."
"I'll have a turn-up bedstead put in it and sleep here, then," quoth Jan. "When folks come in the night, and ring me up, I shall be handy. It'll be better than disturbing the house, as is the case now."
The doctor appeared struck with the proposition.
"I think it would be a very good plan, indeed," he said. "I don't fancy the room's damp."
"Not it," said Jan. "If it were damp, it wouldn't hurt me. I have no time to be ill, I haven't. Damp—Who's that?"
It was a visitor to the surgery—a patient of Dr. West's—and, for the time, the conference was broken up, not to be renewed until evening.
Dr. West and Jan were both fully occupied all the afternoon. When business was over—as much so as a doctor's business ever can be over—Jan knocked at the door of this room, where Dr. West again was.
It was opened about an inch, and the face of the doctor appeared in the aperture, peering out to ascertain who might be disturbing him. The same aperture which enabled him to see out, enabled Jan to see in.
"Why! what's up?" cried unceremonious Jan.