The doctor glanced at Granny Marrable to see how she had taken the reference to her resemblance to Mrs. Prichard, but was just too late to see her face. She had turned to go into the house, and the only evidence he had that it had perturbed her at all was that she said good-night to no one. He felt that he had more than fulfilled his promise to Lady Gwendolen, having done everything short of forcing the pace. His other patient was no doubt already execrating him for not coming to time, so he drove off briskly; at least, so his pony flattered himself. Ideas of speed differ.
The horse whose quick step the doctor heard overhauling him, about a mile on his road, had another ideal, evidently. It did not concern him; so he ignored it until, as its nearer approach caused him to edge close to the margin of the narrow road, the voice of its driver shouted to him, and he pulled up to see why. Perhaps Mr. Barlow, the shouter, had lighted on an overlooked letter for him, and had preferred this method of delivery.
"They're asking for ye ba'ack at t' hoose—ba'ack to Costrell's Varm.... Noa, noa, doctor—'tis the old Granny, not the yoong wench. She's gone off in a sowart of fayunt."
Dr. Nash turned his pony's head without a word, nodded and started. Mr. Barlow called out, as Parthian information, as many particulars as he thought would be audible, and sped on his course, to stand and deliver at every cottage on the route susceptible to correspondence.
"She was looking queer," said the doctor to himself, stimulating his pony's concept of a maximum velocity. "But I never thought of this. The Devil fly away with the Australian twin! Why couldn't she wait six weeks?"
He was immensely relieved to find the old lady sitting up, with her granddaughter applying vinegar to her forehead. She was discountenancing this remedy, or any remedy, as needless, in an unconvincingly weak voice. She would come round if left to herself. She rallied her forces at sight of the doctor, rather resenting him as superfluous. However, his knowledge of the cause of her upset made him an ally, a fact she probably became aware of. He suggested, after exhibiting two or three drops of hartshorn in a wineglass of water, that she should be taken at her word.
While she came round, left to herself in the big armchair, with her eyes shut and a pillow to lean back on, Maisie the granddaughter told her tale—the occurrence as she had seen it. Hearing the doctor's sounds of departure, she had discontinued a fiction of repose—not admitted as fiction, however—to come down and see what on earth Granny and he had been talking their tongues off for. Granny was reading her letter from Dave Wardle, and just the moment she saw her, gave a cry and fell back in her chair; whereon Maisie, running out, told Mr. Barlow to catch the doctor and send him back, then returned to her grandmother. She herself did not seem seriously upset, though much puzzled and surprised.
The doctor saw something. "Where's the letter?" said he.
"Here on the baby," said Mrs. Maisie. And there on the baby, enjoying, in a holy sleep, deep draughts of imaginary milk, was Dave's large round-hand epistle.
The doctor glanced at it, and had the presence of mind to say:—"Ho!—letter from a kid!" and suppress it. "Your Granny wants something," said he, diverting Mrs. Costrell's attention from it. The old lady was rallying visibly. She was, in fact, making an heroic struggle against a sudden overwhelming shock.