Sarah who let him in, cried, "How wet you are, Mr Finlay!"
and took his overcoat to dry in the kitchen. The Scotch
ladies, she told him, and Mrs Forsyth, had gone out to
tea, but they would be back right away, and meanwhile
"the Doctor" was expecting him in the study--he knew the
way.
Finlay did know the way but, as a matter of fact, there
had been time for him to forget it; he had not crossed
Dr Drummond's threshold since the night on which the
Doctor had done all, as he would have said, that was
humanly possible to bring him, Finlay, to reason upon
the matter of his incredible entanglement in Bross. The
door at the end of the passage was ajar however, as if
impatient; and Dr Drummond himself, standing in it,
heightened that appearance, with his "Come you in, Finlay.
Come you in!"
The Doctor looked at the young man in a manner even more
acute, more shrewd, and more kindly than was his wont.
His eye searched Finlay thoroughly, and his smile seemed
to broaden as his glance travelled.
"Man," he said, "you're shivering," and rolled him an
armchair near the fire. ("The fellow came into the room,"
he would say, when he told the story afterward to the
person most concerned, "as if he were going to the stake!")
"This is extraordinary weather we are having, but I think
the storm is passing over.
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