rom Sally to
Dr. Vereker, and _vice-versa_, was fostered by the domestics at his
house as well as at Krakatoa Villa. The maid Craddock, who responded
to Sally's knock on this Shoosmith occasion, threw doubt on the
possibility of the doctor ever being visible again, and kept the door
mentally on the jar while she spoke through a moral gap an inch wide.
Of course, that is only our nonsense. Sally was really in the house
when Craddock heroically, as a forlorn hope in a lost cause, offered
to "go and see"; and going, said, "Miss Nightingale; and is Dr.
Vereker expected in to tea?" without varnish of style, or redundance
of wording. But Sally lent herself to this insincere performance, and
remained in the hall until she was called on to decide whether she
would mind coming in and waiting, and Dr. Vereker would perhaps be
back in a few minutes. All this was part of the system of insincerity
we have hinted at.

So was the tenor of Sally's remarks, while she waited the few minutes,
to the effect that it was a burning shame that she should take up
Mrs. Vereker's time, a crying scandal that she should interrupt her
knitting, and a matter of penitential reflection that she hadn't
written instead of coming, which would have done just as well. To
which Mrs. Vereker, with a certain parade of pretended insincerity
(to make the real article underneath seem _bona fides_), replied with
mock-incredible statements about the pleasure she always had in seeing
Sally, and the rare good fortune which had prompted a visit at this
time, when, in addition to being unable to knit, owing to her eyes,
she had been absorbed in longing for news of a current event that
Sally was sure to know about. She particularised it.

"Oh, it isn't _true_, Mrs. Vereker! You don't mean to say you believed
_that_ nonsense? The idea! Tishy--just fancy!" Goody Vereker (the name
Sally thought of her by) couldn't shake her head, the fulness at the
neck forbade it; but she moved it cosily from side to side
continuously, much as a practicable image of Buddha might have done.

"My child, I've quite given up believing and disbelieving things.
I wait to be told, and then I ask if it's true. Now you've told me.
It isn't true, and that settles the matter."

"But whoever could tell you such _nonsense_, Mrs. Vereker?"

"A little bird, my dear." The image of Buddha left off the movement of
incredulity, and began a very gentle, slow nod. "A little bird tells
me these things--a