"Now, dear Mrs. Picture, you are not to get up, but lie still till I come back. I'm going to try to catch Dr. Nash, and must hurry off. But I am coming back."
"Oh—all right!" There was disappointment in her tone, but it was docility itself. She added, however, with the barest trace of remonstrance:—"I'm quite well, you know. I don't want the doctor."
Gwen laughed. "Oh no—it's not for you! I've ... I've a message for him. I shall soon be back." An excusable fiction, she thought, under the circumstances.
She was only just in time to catch Dr. Nash, whose gig was already in possession of him at his garden-gate with a palpably medical lamp over it, and a "surgery bell" whose polish seemed to guarantee its owner's prescriptions. "Get down and talk to me in the house," said her young ladyship. "Who is it you were going to? Anyone serious?"
"Only Sir Cropton Fuller."
"He can wait.... Can't he?"
"He'll have to. No hurry!" The doctor found time to add, between the gate and the house:—"I go to see him every day to prevent his taking medicine. He's extremely well. I don't get many cases of illness, among my patients." He turned round to look at Gwen, on the doorstep. "Your ladyship doesn't look very bad," said he.
Gwen shook her head. "It's nothing to do with me," she said. "Nor with illness! It's old Mrs. Prichard at Strides Cottage."
The doctor stood a moment, latchkey in hand. "The old lady whose mind is giving way?" said he. He had knitted his brows a little; and, having spoken, he knitted his lips a little.
"We are speaking of the same person," said Gwen. She followed the doctor into his parlour, and accepted the seat he offered. He stood facing her, not relaxing his expression, which worked out as a sort of mild grimness, tempered by a tune which his thumbs in the armpits of his waistcoat enabled him to play on its top-pockets. It was a slow tune. Gwen continued:—"But her mind is not giving way."