Professors down: and a nice result it's going to be for her, and
for the rest of the world in the meantime! On the whole--"

On the whole, the Doctor decided--faithful to his habit of looking
questions in the face and so passing on--that these things worked out
pretty well as they were.

His reflections carried him to the bridge-end, where, in the porch of
the Old Doctor's house, he encountered Mrs Polsue.

"Ah! Good morning, ma'am! We are bound for the same door, it
appears? That's to say if, as I seem to remember, a man called
Nanjivell lives here?"

"He does," Mrs Polsue answered. "And if I may make bold to say so,
it's high time!"

"Eh? . . . Are you looking after him? I'd no idea that he was really
sick."

"No more haven't I," said Mrs Polsue. "But I'll say 'tis time
_somebody_ looked after him, if I say no more. In point of fact,"
she added, "I'm not seeing Nicholas Nanjivell, but a woman called
Penhaligon who lives in the other tenement here. Her husband was
called up last Saturday."

"What, are you ladies at work already?"

"Oh, _I_ don't let the grass grow under my feet," said Mrs Polsue.

"Damn the woman, I suppose that's a slap at _me_," muttered Dr Mant
to himself. But he tapped on the Penhaligons' door for her very
politely.

"Thank you," she said. "That's Nanjivell's door, at the end of the
passage."

He bowed and went on, came to the door, paused for a glance at the
padlock hitched loose on the staple, knocked, and--as his custom was
when visiting the poor--walked in briskly, scarce waiting for an
answer.

"Hullo!"

Between him and the small window, almost blocking the light--on a
platform constructed of three planks and a couple of chairs set face
to face--stood Nicky-Nan, with a trowel in one hand and a
bricklayer's board in the other, surprised in the act of plastering
his parlour ceiling.

"Had an accident here?" asked Dr Mant, eyeing the job critically.
"Old house tumbling about your ears?"

"No . . . yes--that's to say--" stammered Nicky-Nan; then he seemed
to swallow down something, and so to make way for a pent-up fury.
"Who sent for 'ee? Who told 'ee to walk in like that without
knockin'? . . . _That's_ what I ask--Who sent for 'ee here?
_I_ didn!"

"What in thunder's wrong with ye?" asked the Doctor, very coolly
taking a third chair, seating himself astraddle on it, and crossing
his arms over the top. "No harm to be taken patching up a bit of
plaster, is ther