Esther seized the paper eagerly and saw—­a neatly written recipe for salad dressing!

Hot and cold with mortification, she stared at it blankly.  “I have been nicely fooled,” she said in a low voice.

“Am I permitted to smile, or would it hurt your feelings?”

“It is not at all funny!  Of course the real prescription has been removed.  She must have suspected.  You see, I asked her to let me have it.  Oh!” with sudden shame and anger.  “She guessed that I might take it, don’t you see?”

“I am afraid you are right.  But now at least I should think that you have done your whole duty.  It would look as if Mrs. Coombe was herself aware of the inadvisability of continuing this prescription.  Why else should she be so careful to prevent you showing it to me?  At the same time she is determined to go on using it.  We cannot prevent her.”

“Can we do nothing?”

“When I see her I shall be better able to judge.”

“But she is going away.”

“Then we must wait.  If it is, as I suspect, a case of disordered nerves aggravated by improper treatment, the instinct is strongly for concealment.  Do you find, for instance, that Mrs. Coombe is not as frank in other matters as she used to be?”

A shamed blush crimsoned the girl’s cheek, but the doctor’s tone was compelling and she answered in a low voice:  “Yes, I think so.”

“Don’t look like that.  It is only a symptom of something rotten in the nervous system.”

“Isn’t there such a thing as character?” bluntly.

“As distinct from the nervous system?  Some say not.  But we do not need to venture such a devastating belief to know, well, that a dyspeptic is usually disagreeable.  In potential character he may be equal to the cheeriest man who ever ate a hearty dinner.  Think of Carlyle.”

“I don’t like Carlyle.”

“But don’t you admire him?”

“No.  Do you remember the story of the beggar who picked up his hat one day and instead of giving him sixpence, Carlyle said, ’Mon, ye may say ye hae picked up the hat of Thomas Carlyle.’”

The doctor laughed.  “Oh he had a guid conceit o’ himself—­must you go?” For Esther had risen.

“Yes, thank you.  Oh, please do not come with me.  It is only a step.  I’d much rather not.  Mrs. Sykes would conclude that the whole family were in danger of immediate extinction.”

She was so evidently perturbed that the doctor laid down his hat, but for the first time it occurred to him that Mrs. Sykes was not an unmixed blessing.

Esther was holding out her hand.

“Then you think we can safely leave it until mother returns?”

“I think we shall have to, and if things have been going on as long as you think, a week more or less will make no very material difference.  In any case we cannot examine a lady by force or prevent her from getting a prescription until one knows it to be dangerous.”