Sarah who let him in, cried, “How wet you are, Mr Finlay!” and took his overcoat to dry in the kitchen. The Scotch ladies, she told him, and Mrs Forsyth, had gone out to tea, but they would be back right away, and meanwhile “the Doctor” was expecting him in the study—he knew the way.
Finlay did know the way but, as a matter of fact, there had been time for him to forget it; he had not crossed Dr Drummond’s threshold since the night on which the Doctor had done all, as he would have said, that was humanly possible to bring him, Finlay, to reason upon the matter of his incredible entanglement in Bross. The door at the end of the passage was ajar however, as if impatient; and Dr Drummond himself, standing in it, heightened that appearance, with his “Come you in, Finlay. Come you in!”
The Doctor looked at the young man in a manner even more acute, more shrewd, and more kindly than was his wont. His eye searched Finlay thoroughly, and his smile seemed to broaden as his glance travelled.
“Man,” he said, “you’re shivering,” and rolled him an armchair near the fire. (“The fellow came into the room,” he would say, when he told the story afterward to the person most concerned, “as if he were going to the stake!”) “This is extraordinary weather we are having, but I think the storm is passing over.”
“I hope,” said Finlay, “that my aunt and Miss Cameron are well. I understand they are out.”
“Oh, very well—finely. They’re out at present, but you’ll see them bye-and-bye. An excellent voyage over they had—just the eight days. But we’ll be doing it in less than that when the new fast line is running to Halifax. But four days of actual ocean travelling they say now it will take. Four days from imperial shore to shore! That should incorporate us—that should bring them out and take us home.”
The Doctor had not taken a seat himself, but was pacing the study, his thumbs in his waistcoat pockets; and a touch of embarrassment seemed added to the inveterate habit.
“I hear the ladies had pleasant weather.” Finlay remarked.
“Capital—capital! You won’t smoke? I know nothing about these cigars; they’re some Grant left behind him—a chimney, that man Grant. Well, Finlay”—he threw himself into the arm-chair on the other side of the hearth—“I don’t know what to say to you.”
“Surely,” said Finlay restively, “it has all been said, sir.”