“I do not know why I should!” sneered the doctor, his face a dark red with anger.
“Certainly not, if there is no truth in the story,” the curate replied, looking down with his eyes half shut at the chafing little man. “But I suppose it is all an invention, Gregg?”
“It is not an invention that the rector was abominably rude to me,” blurted out the doctor, who scarcely knew with whom to be most angry—his present tormentor or the first cause of his trouble.
“Pooh!” said Clode, “it is only his way.”
“Then it is a d——, it is a most unpleasant way!” retorted the doctor savagely.
“He means no harm,” said the curate gaily. “Why did you not answer him back?”
Dr. Gregg’s face turned a shade redder. That was where the shoe pinched. Why had he not answered him back as Bonamy had, and not stood mute, acknowledging himself the smaller man? That was what was troubling him now, and making him fancy himself the laughing-stock of the town. “I will answer him back in a way he will not like!” he cried viciously, striving to hide his embarrassment under a show of bluster.
“Tut-t-tut!” said the curate provokingly, “do not go and make a fool of yourself by saying things like that, when you know you don’t mean them, man. What can you say to the rector?”
“I will ask him——”
But what he would ask the rector was lost to the world, for at this moment Mr. Bonamy, coming down the pavement behind him, touched his sleeve. “I have just been to your house, doctor,” he said. “My youngest girl is a little out of sorts. Would you mind stepping in and seeing her?”