“’Tain’t got to do with me. You’d best go to the doctor’s house, out of that gate, across the little square, the house on the far side of the chapel.”
Railsford, leaving his luggage stacked on the pavement outside the porter’s lodge, started off with flushed cheeks to the lion’s den. The doctor, said the maid, was in, but was at dinner. The gentleman had better call again in half an hour.
So Railsford, in the closing twilight, took a savage walk round the school precincts, in no mood to admire the natural beauties of the place, or to indulge in any rhapsodies at this near view of the scene of his coming triumphs. In half an hour he returned, and was shown into the doctor’s study.
“How do you do, Mr —;” here the doctor took up his visitor’s card to refresh his memory—“Mr Railsford?”
“I was afraid, sir,” said Mark, “I had mistaken your letter about coming to-day; there appears to be no one—no one who can—I have been unable to ascertain where I am to go.”
The doctor waited patiently for the end of this lucid explanation.
“I rather wonder it did not suggest itself to you to call on me for information.”
Railsford wondered so too, and felt rather sheepish.
“Your train must have been late. I expected you an hour ago.”
“I think we were up to time. I walked from Blankington here.”