He took a step and stumbled over a portmanteau lying open at his feet. “Put your mischievous paws to some use,” he told the girl, “and clear these things away from the floor;” then remembering his rival Le Lièvre; “if the old fool had really got away to town, it would have been a nice day's work for us all,” he added.
Downstairs he joined the Tourtels in the kitchen, a room situated behind the living-room on the left, with low green glass windows, rafters and woodwork smoke-browned with the fires of a dozen generations. In the wooden racks over by the chimney hung flitches of home-cured bacon, and the kettle was suspended by three chains over the centre of the wide hearth, where glowed and crackled an armful of sticks. So dark was the room, in spite of the daylight outside, that two candles were set in the centre of the table, enclosing in their circles of yellow light the pale face and silver hair of the housekeeper, and Tourtel's rugged head and weather-beaten countenance.
He had glasses ready, and a bottle of the cheap brandy for which the Island is famous. “You'll take a drop of something, eh, Doctor?” he said as Owen seated himself on the joncière, a padded settle—green baize covered, to replace the primitive rushes—fitted on one side of the hearth. He stretched his long legs into the light, and for a moment considered moodily the old gaiters and cobbled boots. “You've seen to the horse?” he asked Tourtel.
“My cert'nly; he's in de stable dis hour back, an' I've given him a feed. I tought maybe you'd make a night of it?”
“I may as well for all the work I have to do,” said Owen with sourness; “a damned little Island this for doctors. Nothing ever the matter with anyone except the 'creeps,' and those who have it spend their last penny in making it worse.”
“Dere's as much illness here as anywhere,” said Tourtel, defending the reputation of his native soil, “if once you gets among de right class, among de people as has de time an' de money to make dereselves ill. But if you go foolin' roun' wid de paysans, what can you expec'? We workin' folks can't afford to lay up an' buy ourselves doctors' stuff.”
“And how am I to get among the right class?” retorted Owen, sucking the ends of his moustache into his mouth and chewing them savagely. “A more confounded set of stuck-up, beggarly aristocrats I never met than your people here.” His discontented eye rested on Mrs. Tourtel. “That Mrs. Pedvinn is the wife of Pedvinn the Jurat, I suppose?”—“Yes, de Pedvinns of Rohais.” “Good people,” said Owen thoughtfully; “in with the de Càterelles, and the Dadderney (d'Aldenois) set. Are there children?”—“Tree.”
He took a drink of the spirit and water; his bad temper passed. Margot came in from upstairs.
“De marster sleeps as dough he'd never wake again,” she announced, flinging herself into the chair nearest Owen.
“It's 'bout time he did,” Tourtel growled.