portance. He was not wont to be kept waiting in this way; and though Sir Roger Scatcherd was at present a great and a rich man, Dr. Fillgrave had remembered him a very small and a very poor man. He now began to think of Sir Roger as the stonemason, and to chafe somewhat more violently at being so kept by such a man.
When one is impatient, five minutes is as the duration of all time, and a quarter of an hour is eternity. At the end of twenty minutes the step of Dr. Fillgrave up and down the room had become very quick, and he had just made up his mind that he would not stay there all day to the serious detriment, perhaps fatal injury, of his other expectant patients. His hand was again on the bell, and was about to be used with vigour, when the door opened and Lady Scatcherd entered.
The door opened and Lady Scatcherd entered; but she did so very slowly, as though she were afraid to come into her own dining-room. We must go back a little and see how she had been employed during those twenty minutes.
'Oh laws!' Such had been her first exclamation on hearing that the doctor was in the dining-room. She was standing at the time with her housekeeper in a small room in which she kept her linen and jam, and in which, in company with the same housekeeper, she spent the happiest moments of her life.
'Oh laws! now, Hannah, what shall we do?'
'Send 'un up at once to the master, my lady! let John take 'un up.'
'There'll be such a row in the house, Hannah; I know there will.'
'But sure-ly didn't he send for 'un? Let the master have the row himself, then; that's what I'd do, my lady,' added Hannah, seeing that her ladyship still stood trembling in doubt, biting her thumb-nail.
'You couldn't go up to the master yourself, could you now, Hannah?' said Lady Scatcherd in her most persuasive tone.
'Why no,' said Hannah, after a little deliberation; 'no, I'm afeard I couldn't.'
'Then I must just face it myself.'
And up went the wife to tell her lord that the physician for whom he had sent had come to attend his bidding.
In the interview which then took place the baronet had not indeed been violent, but he had been very determined. Nothing on earth, he said, should induce him to see Dr. Fillgrave and offend his dear old friend Thorne.
'But, Roger,' said her ladyship, half crying, or rather pretending to cry in her vexation, 'what shall I do with the man? How shall I get him out of the house?'
