At this moment Miss Wort reappeared in a sort of furtive hurry.  She gave a timid, sidelong glance at the doctor, and then addressed Bessie.  Mr. Carnegie had his eye upon her:  she was the thorn in his professional flesh.  She meddled with his patients—­a pious woman for whom other people’s souls and internal complaints supplied the excitement absent from her own condition and favorite literature.  She had some superfluous income and much unoccupied time, which she devoted to promiscuous visiting and the relief (or otherwise) of her poorer and busier neighbors.  Mr. Carnegie had refused to accept the plea of her good heart in excuse of her bad practice, and had denounced her, in a moment of extreme irritation, as a presumptuous and mischievous woman; and Miss Wort had publicly rejoined that she would not call in Mr. Carnegie if she were at death’s door, because who could expect a blessing on the remedies of a man who was not a professor of religion?  The most cordial terms they affected was an armed neutrality.  The doctor was never free from suspicion of Miss Wort.  Though she looked scared and deprecating, she did not shrink from responsibility, and would administer a dose of her own prescribing in even critical cases, and pacify the doubts and fears of her unlucky patient with tender assurances that if it did her no good, it could do her no harm.  Men she let alone, they were safe from her:  she did not pretend to know the queer intricacies of their insides; also their aversion for physic she had found to be invincible.

“Two of the pills ten minutes afore dinner-time, Miss Wort, ma’am, did you say?  It is not wrote so plain on the box as it might be,” cried a plaintive treble from the cottage door.  The high hedge and a great bay tree hid Mr. Carnegie from Mrs. Christie’s view, but Miss Wort, timorously aware of his observation, gave a guilty start, and shrieking convulsively in the direction of the voice, “Yes, yes!” rushed to the doctor’s stirrup and burst into eager explanation: 

“It is only Trotter’s strengthening pills, Mr. Carnegie.  The basis of them is iron—­iron or steel.  I feel positive that they will be of service to Mrs. Christie, poor thing! with that dreadful sinking at her stomach; for I have tried them myself on similar occasions.  No, Mr. Carnegie, a crust of bread would not be more to the purpose.  A crust of bread, indeed!  Dr. Thomson of Edinburgh, the famous surgeon, has the highest opinion of Trotter.”

Mr. Carnegie’s face was a picture of disgust.  He would have felt himself culpable if he had not delivered an emphatic protest against Miss Wort’s experiments.  Mrs. Christie had come trembling to the gate—­a pretty-featured woman, but sallow as old parchment—­and the doctor addressed his expostulations to her.  Many defeats had convinced him of the futility of appealing to Miss Wort.

“If you had not the digestion of an ostrich, Mrs. Christie, you would have been killed long ago,” said he with severe reprobation.  “You have devoured half a man’s earnings, and spoilt as fine a constitution as a woman need be blessed with, by your continual drugging.”