"Good morning, Mrs. Landsborough," I said, with immense dignity; "I am sorry that I must retire from the case. It is impossible for me to go on if you disregard my instructions in that manner. No doubt Dr. Campbell——"
The good woman lifted up her hands in amazement and appeal. Even Jeems turned on his bed in quick alarm.
"'Deed, Dr. Ma Whurr!" she cried, "it wasna Dr. Cawmell ava. We wadna think on sic a thing——"
"Your faither's son will never gang oot o' a MacLandsborough's hoose in anger, surely?" said Jeems, making the final Galloway appeal to the clan spirit.
This was conjuring with a name I could not disavow, and strongly against my first intentions I continued to attend the case. Jeems got rapidly better, and my bottle diminished steadily day by day. But whether it went down Jeems's throat or mended the health of the back of the grate, it was better, perhaps, that I did not inquire too closely. On my way home I considered my own prescription, and recalled the ingredients which by taste and smell I discovered in the intruding bottle.
"I am not sure but what—well, it might have been better. I wonder who the man is?" This was as much as I could be brought to admit in those days, even to myself. The doctor, who in the first years of his practice does not think more of the sacredness of his diagnosis than of his married wife and all his family unto cousins six times removed, is not fit to be trusted—not so much as with the administering of one Beecham's pill.
Yet I own the matter troubled me. I had a rival who—no, he did not understand more of the case than myself. But all the same, I wanted to find him out—in the interests of the Medical Register.
But the riddle was resolved one day about a week afterwards in a rather remarkable manner. I was proceeding up the long main street of the Clachan, looking for a house in which Dr. Campbell (with whom of late I had grown strangely intimate) had told me that he would be found at a certain hour.
As I went I noticed, what I had never seen before, a little house, white and clean without, the creepers clambering all over it. This agreed, so far, with the doctor's description. I turned aside and went up two or three carefully reddened steps. A brass knocker blinked in the evening sunshine. I lifted it and knocked.
"Is the doctor in?" I said to a tall gaunt woman who opened the door an inch or two. As it was I could only see a lenticular section of her person, so that in describing her I draw upon later impressions. She hesitated a second or two, and then, rather grudgingly as I thought, opened the door.