"Seen anything of Spring-heeled Jack, the last night or two, Mrs. Muggridge?" he enquired too lightly, as he flung down his hat in similar style at a corner. "Have you heard the last thing that has come to light about him?"
"No, sir, no! But I hope it is no harm," replied the palpitating Thyatira.
"Well, that depends upon how you take it. We have discovered for certain, that he is a medical man from a country parish, not such a very long way from here, who found his practice too small for the slaughter on the wholesale style he delights in. And so he turned his instruments into patent jumpers, tore the heart out of his last patient—he was obliged to choose a poor one, or it would have been too small—then he fitted a Bude-light to his biggest dark lantern. And you know better than I do what he shows you at the window, exactly as the Church-clock strikes twelve."
"Oh, Dr. Jemmy, how you do make one creep! Then after all he is not, as everybody says, even a dissolute nobleman?"
"No. That is where the disappointment lies. He set that story afoot no doubt, to comfort the relatives of the folk he kills. By the by, what a place this old house would be for him! He likes a broad window-sill, just like yours, and the weather is the very thing for him."
"I shall nail up a green baize every night. Oh, Dr. Jemmy, there is a knock at the door! Would you mind seeing who it is—that's a dear?"
Dr. Fox, with a pleasant smile, admitted Dr. Gronow, on his very first visit to the rectory.
"Others not come yet?" asked the elder gentleman, as the trembling housekeeper offered him a chair; "his Reverence would hardly like a pipe here, I suppose. Well, Jemmy, what is your opinion of all this strange affair?"
Mrs. Muggridge had hurried off, with a shiver and a prayer.