Mrs. Shoosmith's form called for filling out in more senses than one. The doctor's mother's form would not have borne anything further in that direction; except, indeed, she had been provided with hooks to go over her chair back, and keep her from rolling along the floor, as a sphere might if asked to sit down.
A suggestion of the exceptional character of all visits from Sally to Dr. Vereker, and vice-versa, was fostered by the domestics at his house as well as at Krakatoa Villa. The maid Craddock, who responded to Sally's knock on this Shoosmith occasion, threw doubt on the possibility of the doctor ever being visible again, and kept the door mentally on the jar while she spoke through a moral gap an inch wide. Of course, that is only our nonsense. Sally was really in the house when Craddock heroically,
as a forlorn hope in a lost cause, offered to "go and see"; and going, said, "Miss Nightingale; and is Dr. Vereker expected in to tea?" without varnish of style, or redundance of wording. But Sally lent herself to this insincere performance, and remained in the hall until she was called on to decide whether she would mind coming in and waiting, and Dr. Vereker would perhaps be back in a few minutes. All this was part of the system of insincerity we have hinted at.
So was the tenor of Sally's remarks, while she waited the few minutes, to the effect that it was a burning shame that she should take up Mrs. Vereker's time, a crying scandal that she should interrupt her knitting, and a matter of penitential reflection that she hadn't written instead of coming, which would have done just as well. To which Mrs. Vereker, with a certain parade of pretended insincerity (to make the real article underneath seem bona fides), replied with mock-incredible statements about the pleasure she always had in seeing Sally, and the rare good fortune which had prompted a visit at this time, when, in addition to being unable to knit, owing to her eyes, she had been absorbed in longing for news of a current event that Sally was sure to know about. She particularised it.
"Oh, it isn't true, Mrs. Vereker! You don't mean to say you believed that nonsense? The idea! Tishy—just fancy!" Goody Vereker (the name Sally thought of her by) couldn't shake her head, the fulness at the neck forbade it; but she moved it cosily from side to side continuously, much as a practicable image of Buddha might have done.
"My child, I've quite given up believing and disbelieving things. I wait to be told, and then I ask if it's true. Now you've told me. It isn't true, and that settles the matter."
"But whoever could tell you such nonsense, Mrs. Vereker?"
"A little bird, my dear." The image of Buddha left off the movement of incredulity, and began a very gentle, slow nod. "A little bird tells me these things—all sorts of things. But now I know this one's untrue I should never dream of believing it. Not for one moment."
Sally felt inclined to pinch, bite, or otherwise maltreat the speaker, so very worthless did her offer of optional disbelief seem, and, indeed, so very offensive. But her inclination only went the
length of wondering how she could get at a vulnerable point through so much fat.