Ninian shoved her aside. "I'll go," he said.

"We'd better get some one to look after her," Gilbert proposed when
Ninian had gone. "Magnolia's no damn good!..."

"No, sir, I ain't ... not with dead people I ain't!"

"Clear out, Magnolia!" Gilbert shouted at her. "Go and make the beds or
sit in the kitchen or something!"

"Yes, sir, certainly, sir!" Magnolia answered, and then she left the
room.

"I've never felt such a helpless ass in my life before," Gilbert went on
when she had shut the door behind her. "I simply don't know what to do!"

"We can't do anything," Henry murmured. "Dunroon said he'd come in again
in a short while. Perhaps if we were to get a nurse or somebody. There's
sure to be a Nurses' Home near to. Can't we ring up somebody?"

He got hold of the telephone book and began to turn over the pages
rapidly.

"What are you looking for?" Gilbert asked.

"Nursing Homes," he answered.

"That's no good. Let's send round to Dunroon's!..."

"He won't be there!"

"Some one'll be there. We'll ring 'em up!..."

Dr. Dunroon's secretary was there, and she knew exactly what to do. "Oh,
very well," she said in a voice so calm that Gilbert felt reassured.
"I'll send some one round as soon as possible!"

Ninian came down the stairs before they had finished telephoning to Dr.
Dunroon's secretary.

"I'm going to fetch her husband," he whispered to Henry, and then he
left them.

4

"Let's go out," Gilbert said suddenly to Henry.

The nurse had arrived, and was busy in attendance on Mrs. Clutters.
Magnolia, full of the antagonism which servants instinctively feel
towards nurses, was maintaining a grievance in the kitchen. "Givin' 'er
orders, as if she was some one!" she was mumbling to herself. "Too
bossy, she is!..."

"It's no good trying to do any work to-day," Gilbert went on. "I ... I
couldn't make up things with her ... up there!"

They told Magnolia that they would have their meals out, and that she
need not trouble to cook anything for them, and they sent for the nurse
and explained their circumstances to her. "That's all right," she said
cheerfully, "I'll look after myself!"

They set off towards Hampstead, but after a while they found themselves
returning to Bloomsbury. They could not keep away from the house....
They tried to eat a meal at the Vienna Cafe, but they could not swallow
the food, so they paid their bill and went away. They wandered into the
British Museum, and tried to i