"And marry," put in Lord Blackborough calmly. "It is altogether a most satisfactory business."
Sister Ann looked at him doubtfully. "So far as I am concerned it is so, certainly. I disclaim responsibility after a patient leaves my hospital."
"My dear Sister Ann," laughed Lord Blackborough, "I disclaim all responsibility for anything. It is the only possible way of feeling moral."
He found Dr. Ramsay looking a trifle _egaré_ in a room of surpassing tidiness. Helen's hand was visible also in the doctor's dress. He had nothing but good to report in every way except that he had found it extremely difficult to ensure a supply of absolutely undeniable drugs.
"It is not that any one deliberately means to cheat, but that the real thing is so difficult to get," he remarked ruefully. "You see, if a fellow sells wine or spirits that isn't genuine he can be run in; but you may kill half a dozen babies by selling stale ipecacuhana wine or any other filth and no one asks questions."
He was loud in praise of his assistants, the secretary, Sister Ann. Each and all were first-class.
"And Helen--Mrs. Tresillian, I mean?" asked Ned drily, "I hope she is satisfactory as matron."
Peter Ramsay's face showed a trifle more colour. "Satisfactory," he echoed, "she is more than satisfactory! Do you know--" his voice sank to an almost awed tone--"I believe she looks after my--my underclothes herself."
Ned Blackborough burst into a roar of laughter.
"My poor Peter!" he said, "vested interests again! It's too bad!" Then he sobered down and looked quite gravely at the doctor, who was laughing too.
"Ramsay," he said, "why don't you ask my cousin to marry you?"
"I asked her yesterday," replied the doctor gloomily.
"The devil you did!" ejaculated Ned. Vaguely all this interested him, made him forget himself. "What did she say?"
Peter Ramsay got up and walked about the room. "What did she say? It is an odd thing, Blackborough, what different ideas people have about love. I used to think it was a kind of fever that would yield to strict diet, and a saline treatment. It isn't. At least something which has got mixed up in it may be so; but--now on the other hand your cousin, who is a sensible woman, mind you, seems to me somehow to have got hold of the wrong end of the stick. She thinks--oh! hang it all I can't go vivisecting what she thinks--it's bad enough to do it for oneself--but because she can't at nine-and-twenty feel the same--yes! I'll say it--purely physical attraction for me that she felt for that poor sick man at nineteen, she says that it is a desecration for any one even to speak of marriage to her. I often wish the good women of the world could be made to understand how purely evanescent that sort of thing is, for how little it counts in the aggregate sum of life. Here is Helen--Mrs. Tressilian--giving it first place, while other good women relegate it to the nethermost hell; and all the while they prate about love with a big L."