n the slightest. I've been with him
myself this morning, lulling him."

"Were you, then?" said Doyle.

"I was, and I think I may say that for the immediate present he's lulled."

"And how did you like him?" said Doyle.

"My feelings don't matter," said Meldon. "As a matter of fact, judging
from a single interview, I should say he was a pleasant enough,
straightforward sort of man who is trying to do what is right."

"If he tried less," said Doyle, "he'd get on better."

"Quite so. And you mustn't think that I'm going to allow my personal
feelings to interfere with my action in the matter. The Major is my
friend, and I have a great regard for the poor old rector, in spite of
his suffering from bronchitis. Also I like the people of Ballymoy, and
I'm ready to help them in any way I can. So, whatever opinion I have
formed of Simpkins, I'm going to deal with him precisely as if he were my
personal enemy."

"What do you mean to do to him?" said the doctor. "You were speaking
this minute of a _post mortem_."

"It won't come to that," said Meldon, "unless you boggle over the death
certificate. But the precise details of my scheme I must keep to myself
for the present, merely saying that I shall be severe with him. I
couldn't, in fact, be severer if I caught him throwing stones at my
infant daughter."

"Is that the one the Major stood for?" said Doyle. "He was talking to me
about her. A fine child she is by all accounts."

"She was a fine child," said Meldon, "until she got the whooping-cough.
Since then she's been wakeful at night.--By the way, doctor, what do you
think is the proper way to feed a child that has the whooping-cough? At
the present time she's living chiefly on a kind of yellow drink made up
out of a powdery stuff out of a tin which tastes like biscuits when it's
dry. Would you say now that was a good food for her?"

"You can rear a child," said the doctor, "whether it has the
whooping-cough or not, on pretty near anything, so long as you give it
enough of whatever it is you do give it."

"I'm glad to bear you say that," said Meldon; "for my wife has a notion
that food ought to be weighed out by ounces, so that the child wouldn't
get too much at a time."

"Did she get that out of a book?"

"She did--a little book with a pink cover on it. Do you know it?"

"I do not; but if I were you I'd burn it."

"I did," said Meldon. "I burned it before it was a week in the house.
If I hadn't