Mrs. Crichton looked up doubtfully.
“Are you in fun, Edmond?” she asked. “I should not have thought it the sort of thing you would like to undertake. You like to be so independent, and I dare say this Colonel Methvyn is a disagreeable, stuck-up old man, who would quite look down upon a Sothernbay doctor.”
“I don’t care. If he does what I tell him, I’m quite willing to do my best for him. If he doesn’t, I should give it up,” said Mr. Guildford carelessly. “Still you are right, Bessie, in a sense. It isn’t the sort of thing I generally care about at all. I don’t quite know what made me agree to it.”
His face grew graver; he seemed to be revolving some question in his own mind. “It will be nice to be forced into the country every week during the summer,” he said lightly. “I fancy that was partly the reason I undertook it. I don’t fancy Colonel Methvyn is what you call a ‘stuck-up’ old man. He really suffers a great deal, Farmer tells me, and bears it very well. He was a strong, active man not many years ago, but he had a very bad fall in the hunting-field, and has never recovered it, and never will. He doesn’t require much doctoring, but Mrs. Methvyn gets nervous about him, and so on the whole it is better that some one should see him regularly. Farmer says it seems to cheer him too. He takes great interest in all that is going on. Till this year he has been well enough to go to town for two or three months with his wife and daughter; but he seems to have failed lately—the little boy’s death affected him a good deal.”
“Was the little boy his son?” asked Bessie.
“Oh! no; his grandson. So you won’t mind my leaving you once a week, Bessie, for an evening? Sometimes I may have to stay all night if I go by the late train.”
“It won’t matter much to me, Edmond,” said Mrs. Crichton regretfully. “I must really go home in a fortnight. I dare say it will be a good thing for you to leave Sothernbay for a little, if it is only for a few hours. You know I am always telling you, Edmond, that you will grow into an old bachelor before you know what you are about. You never see any one but your patients. I believe it is years since you have gone out to dinner even. I shall be very glad for you to make acquaintance with some people out of Sothernbay if they treat you properly.”
“I shall not require and I don’t intend to ‘make acquaintance’ with any of the family except my patient, Colonel Methvyn,” said Mr. Guildford with slight haughtiness, half repenting his unusual communicativeness to his sister. “I am the last man on earth to make a social stepping-stone of my profession, or to wish to have any relations except professional ones with people out of my own sphere. You might know that, Bessie, I should think.”
Mrs. Crichton looked hurt. “You need not take me up so, Edmond,” she said rather pettishly. “I don’t understand what you mean about sociable stepping-stones; you use such odd expressions. As for people being out of your own sphere, I know what that means, but I think you are very foolish. You don’t mean to say that you haven’t every right to call yourself a gentleman? You will be saying next I am not a lady.”
“‘Gentleman and lady’ are wide words nowadays,” began Mr. Guildford teasingly, but seeing that his sister looked really annoyed, he changed his tone. “Don’t be vexed, Bessie,” he said coaxingly; “I think I am pretty reasonable on these points really. I am afraid it is true that I am growing rather bearish. I wish you would come and live with me altogether and civilize me.”