"Run round to the bowling green, Master Paul," says
she. "You'll find the doctor there, I think. Just tell
him that a patient is waiting for him."
She seems in these interviews to inspire them with a
kind of hushed feeling of awe, as if they had found their
way into some holy of holies. My own actual appearance
is quite an anti-climax after the introduction by Miss
Williams.
Another of her devices is to make appointments with
an extreme precision as to time, I being at the moment
worked to death (at a cricket match).
"Let us see!" says she, looking at the slate. "He
will be clear at seven minutes past eight this evening.
Yes, he could just manage it then. He has no one at all
from seven past to the quarter past"--and so at the
appointed hour I have my patient precipitating himself
into my room with the demeanour of the man who charges in
for his bowl of hot soup at a railway station. If he
knew that he is probably the only patient who has opened
my door that evening he would not be in such a hurry--or
think so much of my advice.
One curious patient has come my way who has been of
great service to me. She is a stately looking widow,
Turner by name, the most depressingly respectable figure,
as of Mrs. Grundy's older and less frivolous sister. She
lives in a tiny house, with one small servant to scale.
Well, every two months or so she quite suddenly goes on
a mad drink, which lasts for about a week.
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