"Stop that beastly noise!" he shouted, "and shut the window, and put on a respectable garment, and come downstairs and let us in."
"Go' bless ye, doctor," she exclaimed, "you are a good man. But you didn't ought to talk like that to _me_. I lorst a son in the Bower war."
At that moment the door was opened by some other dweller in the house. And the doctor and his patient entered in. Not knowing the neighbourhood and not liking it, and being also of a curious nature, I awaited the doctor's return. I had not long to wait. He came out very soon, and we walked away together into clearer air. And the doctor spoke.
"It is a deuced queer thing," he said, "that a man can't stop for five minutes at a dam coffee stall without some fool or other finding work for him. I'll never go to that stall again. I'll be damned if I will. I ought to have got home half an hour ago."
"Yes," I said--I believe that vaguely I sought to comfort him--"and she _would_ have been better off in the infirmary?"
"Don't talk foolishness, young man," replied the round little doctor. "You are talking dam nonsense. Infirmary--pooh! With a baby almost due, and with all those bruises! They would have made a complete job of it there. They would have kept her there for the lying-in and all--a six weeks' job at least."
"Matter? Of course it would. That man will be out in a week, even if our local humorist doesn't let him off with a fine. What's to become of that poor girl's home, do you suppose, while she's in and he's out?"
"Do you live in this neighbourhood, sir?" The doctor wore a visage as of painful wonder.
The doctor's wonder grew. "What under heaven are you doing in the purlieus of Mile End Road at two in the morning, then?" he demanded.
"Sir," I said, with grand simplicity, "you behold in me the representative of an inexpensive but celebrated newspaper. I am come here, by editorial instruction, to seek out Blossom, the chimney-sweep philosopher, whose opinion on horse-racing we are anxious to secure for our magazine page. But Blossom has evaporated. Mrs. Blossom vainly seeketh him. So does the other woman's husband. I have prepared a full and detailed report of this disgraceful scandal, which will appear, together with photographs, on our sermon page next Sunday. And as, when I communicated by telephone with my editor, he was so kind as to relieve me from further intellectual activity for the day, and as I do not know Mile End, and as I----"