"Thank you for your prompt kindness. Dr. Williams will drive you to the house. If you have brought a servant he might take your luggage to the Fox and Hounds Inn, where Dr. Williams has secured rooms for you. I regret exceedingly we have no accommodation here, but, in any event, you will be more comfortable at the inn."
He looked at the doctor. In a vague way, his voice recalled accents he seemed to recognize.
"I will not be back from the Grange House before then?"
"Thank you. You will stop a moment at the telegraph office?"
"There is so little time. Is it of great importance? Of course----"
"Oh, I know what to do. Green--take my traps to the Fox and Hounds Inn. Then go to the telegraph office and send a message in my name to Miss Atherley, saying: 'Arrived. Sir Philip worse.' That is all."
Anson's valet saluted and left them. Dr. Williams said cheerfully:
"That disposes of a difficulty. Are you ready, Mr. Anson?"
They entered a ramshackle dogcart, for which the doctor apologized.
"These hills knock one's conveyances to pieces. I am having a new cart built, but it will be done for in a couple of years. Out in all weathers, you see. To carry you I had to leave my man at home."
The doctor himself seemed to be young and smart-looking. Evidently Scarsdale agreed with him, if not with his vehicles. The horse, too, was a good one, and they moved through a scattered village at a quick trot.
They met a number of people, but Dr. Williams was talking so eagerly to his companion that he did not nod to any of them.
As the road began to climb toward a bleak moorland he became less voluble, more desirous to get Anson to speak. Philip thought that the doctor listened to him with a curious eagerness. Probably Sir Philip and Lady Morland impressed him as an odd couple; he would be anxious to learn what sort of relative this was who had traveled from London to see them.
Philip was in small humor for conversation. He looked forward to an exceedingly unpleasant interview, when his lips would utter consoling words to which he must strive to impart a genuine and heartfelt ring; that would need an effort, to say the least.
The road wound its way through pines and heather, but ever upward, until the trees yielded to an unbroken range of open mountain, and the farms that nestled in nooks of the hillside disappeared wholly.