"Thank you, thank you, Miss Bowater, but——" cried Dr Phelps, with a smooth uplifted hand, and almost statuesque in his pose. His refusal was too late. Miss Bowater had hastened from the room.
His panic passed. He reseated himself, and remarking that it was a very cold afternoon, predicted that if the frost continued, skating might be expected. Conversation of this kind is apt so soon to faint away like a breeze in hot weather, that I kept wondering what to say next. Besides, whenever Dr Phelps seemed impelled to look at me, he far more quickly looked away, and the sound of his voice suggested that he was uncertain if he was not all but talking to himself. To put him more at his ease I inquired boldly if he had many other midgets among his patients.
The long lashes swept his cheeks; he pondered a while on my landlady's window curtains. "As a matter of fact perhaps not," he replied at last, as if giving me the result of a mathematical calculation.
"I suppose, Dr Phelps," I then inquired, "there might be more, at any time, might there not?" Our glances this time met. He blinked.
"My father and mother, I mean," I explained in some confusion, "were just of the com—of the ordinary size. And what I was wondering is, whether you yourself would be sorry—in quite a general way, of course—if you found your practice going down like that."
"Going down?"
"I mean the patients coming smaller. I never had the opportunity of asking our own doctor, Dr Grose. At Lyndsey, you know. Besides, I was a child then. Now, first of all, it is true, isn't it, that giants are usually rather dull-witted people? So nobody would deliberately choose that kind of change. If, then, quality does vary with quantity, mightn't there be an improvement in the other direction? You will think I am being extremely ego—egotistical. But one must take Jack's side, mustn't one?—even if one's Jill?"
"Jack?"
"The Giant Killer."
He looked at me curiously, and his finger and thumb once more strayed up towards the waistcoat pocket in which he kept his thermometer. But instead of taking it out, he coughed.