"So this was Miss Bulliston," I said, to bring him back to the point in which I was most immediately interested. "That's all very well, but what was the matter with old Bliss, her father?"
Peterson looked as if he would have winked if he had dared, but the sternness in my eye checked him.
"Something nervous," he said, gazing at me blankly. "Truda kept stirring him up till the poor old boy nearly fretted himself into a fever, and so had me sent for. Oh, I was properly enough called in. You needn't look like that, McQuhirr. You've no gratitude for my getting you a good paying patient. I tell you the old man was so frightened that Truda——"
"It had got to 'Truda,' had it?" I interjected, bitterly. But Peterson took no notice, going composedly on with his story.
"... Truda ran all the way to the lodge gates, where I was waiting with two kestrels' and a marsh-harrier, unblown, but all done up in cotton wool."
"What!" I cried, "the birds?"
"No, the eggs, of course," said Peterson; "and she said: 'What have you got there?' So I told her two kestrels' and a marsh-harrier. Then she said: 'Is that all? I thought you would have got that kite's you promised me by this time. But come along and cure my father of the cholera, and the measles, and the distemper, and the spavin! He's got them all this morning, besides several other things I've forgot the names of. Come quick! Cousin Jem from London is with him. He'll frighten him worse than anybody. I'll take you up through the shrubbery. Give me your hand!'
"So she took my hand, and we ran up together to the house."
"Peterson," I said, "you and I have a monthly engagement. On this day month I shall have no further occasion for your services. Suppose anyone had seen you! What would they have thought of Dr. McQuhirr's assistant?"
"I never gave it a thought," he said, waving the interruption away; "and anyway, if all tales are true, you did a good deal of light skirmishing up about Nether Neuk in your own day!"