“It is the cat,” said Tom. “She is under the dresser, and she keeps ‘swearing.’”
The young man seemed rather afraid to approach the indignant animal; but the old lady bravely put in her hand and drew pussy out.
“No wonder she ‘swears,’ poor dear!” she observed. “Hot oil or grease has been dropped on her, and has burned away about an inch of fur. I don’t know what we can do for her, especially just now. But, at least, we’ll give her a saucer of milk as a sign of sympathy.”
At that moment the uncertain step of Wilfrid Somerset was heard on the kitchen stair.
“Mrs. Challoner asks me to get the cushions off the armchair,” he said, “and I’m afraid you’ll be wanted,” he added, addressing Tom, “for I’m a poor, useless creature where bodily strength is required.”
Without a moment’s hesitation the doctor had diagnosed Mrs. Morison’s “fit.”
“She’s been drinking,” he said laconically.
“But there is no smell of spirit,” pleaded Lucy, reluctant to lose faith in the unhappy woman.
“No,” said the doctor; “but there’s the scent of the little lozenges which gentlemen take to hide the smell of tobacco. That’s the secret, ma’am. This case doesn’t want any treatment save to be put on a safe couch and allowed ‘to sleep it off,’ when I trust she will awake properly ashamed of herself.”
It was impossible to carry the heavy inert body to the servant’s bedroom upstairs. But there was a little closet-like room at the back of the hall, empty save for a few ferns and polled plants which Lucy kept there. In that room Mr. Somerset arranged all the cushions he could find in the kitchen, which were not a few, since they included the mattress of a chair-bedstead which stood there in its chair capacity. Then the doctor and Tom Black carried in the unconscious woman, while poor Lucy gathered up the scattered cutlery, which included a broken knife, a toasting-fork, and an oyster opener.