quote Bingo, who suffered hideously
from the whey-cure, every prospect pleases, and only man is bile--and
woman, too, if seeing black spots in showers like smuts in a London fog,
only sailing up instead of coming down, means a disturbed gastric system.
I'm not sure now that the Bishop did not mention your name. Can he have
done so, or am I hashing things? Do set my mind at rest?"

Saxham said with stiffness:

"It would be possible that the Bishop would remember me. I operated on him
for the removal of the appendix in 18--"

"If you had taken away his Ritualistic prejudices at the same time, you
would have made his wife a happy woman. Her soul yearns for incense and
vestments, candles, and acolytes, and most of all for her boy. Well, she
will thank you herself for him one day, Doctor." The little dry hand,
glittering with magnificent rings, touched Saxham's gently. "In the
meantime let a woman who hasn't got a son shake hands with you for her."

"You make too much of that affair." Saxham took the offered hand. It
pressed his kindly, and the little lady went on:

"You're still a prophet in your own country, you know, though it pleases
you to make yourself out a--a kind of medical Rip Van Winkle. In June last
year--when I did not guess that I should ever know you--I heard a woman
say: 'If Owen had been here, the child wouldn't have died.' And the woman
was your sister-in-law, Mrs. David Saxham."

Saxham's blue eyes shot her a steely look. The wings of his mobile
nostrils quivered as he drew quickened breath. He waited, with his
obstinate under-lip thrust out, for the rest. If he did not fully grasp
the real and genuine kindliness that prompted the little woman, at least
he did her the justice of not shutting her up as an impudent chatterbox.
She went on, a little nervously:

"I don't think I ever mentioned to you before that I had met your brother
and his wife? She is still a very attractive person, but--it is not the
type to wear well, and the boy's death cut them both up terribly."

"There was a boy--who died?"

"In the spring of last year. Of--meningitis, I think his mother said, and
she declared over and over that if you had been there, you would have
saved him."

"At least, I should have done my best."

She had turned her eyes away in telling him, or she would have seen the
relief in his face. He understood now why his mother's trustees had
prompted the solicitors' advertisement. He was his nephew's heir,