“No, Captain Brodie,” he said coldly. “Who’s the rogue or the fool this time?” but the Captain was too stupid to perceive it. He stared perplexedly.
“I hear,” said he, “the Doctor’s in a difficulty.”
“Is he, is he?” said Mr Dyce. “That’s a chance for his friends to stand by him.”
“Let him take it!” said Captain Consequence, puffing. “Did he not say to me once yonder, ‘God knows how you’re living.’”
“It must be God alone, for all the rest of us are wondering,” said Mr Dyce, and left the man to put it in his pipe and smoke it.
Along the street came the two Miss Duffs, who kept the dame school, and he saw a hesitation in their manner when they realised a meeting was inevitable. If they had been folk that owed him anything he would not have wondered, from their manner, to see them tuck up their skirts and scurry down the lane. Twins they were—a tiny couple, scarcely young, dressed always in a douce long-lasting brown, something in their walk and colour that made them look like pigeon hens, and long ago conferred on them that name in Daniel Dyce’s dwelling. They met him in front of his own door, and seemed inclined to pass in a trepidation.
He took off his hat to them and stood, full of curiosity about Lennox.
“What a lovely winter day!” said Miss Jean, with an air of supplication, as if her very life depended on his agreement.
“Isn’t it perfectly exquisite!” said Miss Amelia, who usually picked up the bald details of her sister’s conversation and passed them on embroidered with a bit of style.
“It’s not bad,” said Mr Dyce, blinking at them, wondering what ailed the dears to-day. They were looking uneasily around them for some way of escape; he could almost hear the thump of their hearts, he noted the stress of their breathing. Miss Jean’s eyes fastened on the tree-tops over the banker’s garden wall; he felt that in a moment she would spread out her wings and fly. “You have opened the school again,” he said simply.