Just as much--just as much! An' God he'd be just
as pleased if you saved 'un, Doctor. Don't take it from me. Miss Florence
will tell ye de very same. Don't leave 'im, Doctor!"
"I know. I know," said the man, "but he'll be quiet for a while now.
We'll get the nurse and the medicine as fast as we can." He signalled me
to come forward with the car, and I strove not to be privy to what
followed; but I saw the girl's face, blotched and frozen with grief, and I
felt the hand without a ring clutching at my knees when we moved away.
The Doctor was a man of some humour, for I remember he claimed my car
under the Oath of AEsculapius, and used it and me without mercy. First we
convoyed Mrs. Madehurst and the blind woman to wait by the sick bed till
the nurse should come. Next we invaded a neat county town for
prescriptions (the Doctor said the trouble was cerebro-spinal meningitis),
and when the County Institute, banked and flanked with scared market
cattle, reported itself out of nurses for the moment we literally flung
ourselves loose upon the county. We conferred with the owners of great
houses--magnates at the ends of overarching avenues whose big-boned
womenfolk strode away from their tea-tables to listen to the imperious
Doctor. At last a white-haired lady sitting under a cedar of Lebanon and
surrounded by a court of magnificent Borzois--all hostile to motors--gave
the Doctor, who received them as from a princess, written orders which we
bore many miles at top speed, through a park, to a French nunnery, where
we took over in exchange a pallid-faced and trembling Sister.
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