“Of course,” said Dr. Stirling, “ten years is a long time.  He was an old dog.  Well, you’ve still got the celebrated Fossette.”  He turned to Sophia.

“Oh yes,” said Constance, perfunctorily.  “Fossette’s ill.  The fact is that if Fossette hadn’t been ill, Spot would probably have been alive and well now.”

Her tone exhibited a grievance.  She could not forget that Sophia had harshly dismissed Spot to the kitchen, thus practically sending him to his death.  It seemed very hard to her that Fossette, whose life had once been despaired of, should continue to exist, while Spot, always healthy and unspoilt, should die untended, and by treachery.  For the rest, she had never liked Fossette.  On Spot’s behalf she had always been jealous of Fossette.

“Probably alive and well now!” she repeated, with a peculiar accent.

Observing that Sophia maintained a strange silence, Dr. Stirling suspected a slight tension in the relations of the sisters, and he changed the subject.  One of his great qualities was that he refrained from changing a subject introduced by a patient unless there was a professional reason for changing it.

“I’ve just met Richard Povey in the town,” said he.  “He told me to tell ye that he’ll be round in about an hour or so to take you for a spin.  He was in a new car, which he did his best to sell to me, but he didn’t succeed.”

“It’s very kind of Dick,” said Constance.  “But this afternoon really we’re not—­”

“I’ll thank ye to take it as a prescription, then,” replied the doctor.  “I told Dick I’d see that ye went.  Splendid June weather.  No dust after all that rain.  It’ll do ye all the good in the world.  I must exercise my authority.  The truth is, I’ve gradually been losing all control over ye.  Ye do just as ye like.”

“Oh, doctor, how you do run on!” murmured Constance, not quite well pleased to-day by his tone.

After the scene between Sophia and herself at Buxton, Constance had always, to a certain extent, in the doctor’s own phrase, ’got her knife into him.’  Sophia had, then, in a manner betrayed him.  Constance and the doctor discussed that matter with frankness, the doctor humorously accusing her of being ‘hard’ on him.  Nevertheless the little cloud between them was real, and the result was often a faint captiousness on Constance’s part in judging the doctor’s behaviour.

“He’s got a surprise for ye, has Dick!” the doctor added.

Dick Povey, after his father’s death and his own partial recovery, had set up in Hanbridge as a bicycle agent.  He was permanently lamed, and he hopped about with a thick stick.  He had succeeded with bicycles and had taken to automobiles, and he was succeeding with automobiles.  People were at first startled that he should advertise himself in the Five Towns.  There was an obscure general feeling that because his mother had been a drunkard and his father a murderer, Dick Povey had no right