an ass—a damned ass,” and he flashed a look over his shoulder in the direction of the fruit-garden.
Familiarity had accustomed Miss Carmagee to her brother’s forcible methods of expression. He detonated over the most trivial topics, and the stout lady took the splutterings of his indignation as a matter of course.
“Well?” and she examined her bent spectacles forgivingly.
“Murchison’s been overworking himself.”
“So Kate told me.”
“The man’s a fool.”
“A conscientious fool, Porteus.”
Mr. Carmagee sniffed, and expelled a sigh through his mustache.
“I’ve warned him over and over again. Idiot! He’ll break down. They had to bring him home in a cab from Mill Lane half an hour ago.”
His sister’s face betrayed unusual animation.
“What is the matter?”
“Heat stroke, or fainting fit. I saw the cab at the door, and collared the youngsters as they were coming round the corner with the nurse. Poor little beggars. I shall tell Murchison he’s an infernal fool unless he takes two months’ rest.”
Miss Carmagee knew where her brother’s heart lay. He generally abused his friends when he was most in earnest for their salvation.
“Kate will persuade him, Porteus.”
“The woman’s a treasure. The man ought to consider her and the children before he addles himself for a lot of thankless and exacting sluts. Conscience! Conscience be damned. Why, only last week the man must sit up half the night with a sweep’s child that had diphtheria. Conscience! I call it nonsense.”
Miss Carmagee smiled like the moon coming from behind a cloud.
“You approve of Parker Steel’s methods?”
“That little snob!” and the lawyer’s coat-tails gave an expressive flick.
“James Murchison only wants rest. Leave him to Kate; wives are the best physicians often.”
Mr. Carmagee’s keys applauded the remark.
“Taken a cottage on Marley Down, have they?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll recommend a renewal of the honeymoon. Hallo, here comes the sunlight.”
Mr. Porteus romped across the grass to poke his wrinkled face into the oval of the Dutch bonnet.
“Hallo, who says senna to-night? What! Miss Gwendolen Murchison approves of senna!”
“I’ve won that sixpence, godpa.”
“Indeed, sir, I think not.”
“Jack can have the sixpence; it’s his buffday to-morrow.”
“A lady who likes senna and renounces sixpences! Go to, Master John, you must run to Mr. Parsons, the clockmaker, and buy godma a pair of new spectacles.”
“Spectacles!” and Master Jack mouthed his scorn.
“A sad day for us, Miss Carmagee, when babies sit upon our infirmities!”
Parker Steel dropped into his Roxton tailor’s that same afternoon to have a summer suit fitted. The proprietor, an urbane and bald-headed person with the deportment of a diplomat, rubbed his hands and remarked that professional duties must be very exacting in the heat of June.
“Your colleague, I understand, sir—Dr. Murchison, sir—has had an attack from overwork; sunstroke, they say.”
“What! Sunstroke?”
“So I have been informed, sir.”
“Indeed!”
“Or an attack of faintness. Dr. Murchison is a most laborious worker. Four buttons, thank you; a breast-pocket, as before, certainly. Any fancy vestings to-day, doctor? No! Greatly obliged, sir, I’m sure,” and the diplomat dodged to the door and swung it open with a bow.
Parker Steel found his wife reading under the Indian cedar in the garden. She was dressed in white, with a red rose in her bosom, the green shadows of the trees and shrubs about her casting a sleek sheen over her olive face and dusky hair. Poets might have written odes to her, hailing the slim sweetness of her womanliness, using the lily as a symbol of her beauty and the Madonna-like radiance of her spiritual face.
She glanced up at her husband as he came spruce and complacent, like any Agag, over the grass.
“Murchison has had a sunstroke.”
“What! Who told you?”
“Rudyard, the tailor.”
The book was lying deprecatingly at Mrs. Betty’s feet. Her eyes swept from her husband to dwell reflectively on the scarlet pomp of the Oriental poppies.
“Do you think it was a sunstroke, Parker?”
Her husband glanced at his neat boots and whistled.
“What a melodramatic mind you have,” he said.
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