I've got me
buggy down there; I'll take you safe. And you shan't regret it; I'll
make it worth your while, by the Lord Harry I will!"
"Pshaw!"--Mahony opened the door of the surgery and struck a match. It
was a rough grizzled fellow--a "cocky," on his own showing--who
presented himself in the lamplight. His wife had fallen ill that
afternoon. At first everything seemed to be going well; then she was
seized with fits, had one fit after another, and all but bit her tongue
in two. There was nobody with her but a young girl he had fetched from a
mile away. He had meant, when her time came, to bring her to the
District Hospital. But they had been taken unawares. While he waited he
sat with his elbows on his knees, his face between his clenched fists.
In dressing, Mahony reassured Polly, and instructed her what to say to
people who came inquiring after him; it was unlikely he would be back
before afternoon. Most of the patients could wait till then. The one
exception, a case of typhoid in its second week, a young Scotch surgeon,
Brace, whom he had obliged in a similar emergency, would no doubt see
for him--she should send Ellen down with a note. And having poured
Doyle out a nobbler and put a flask in his own pocket, Mahony reopened
the front door to the howl of the wind.
The lantern his guide carried shed only a tiny circlet of light on the
blackness; and the two men picked their steps gingerly along the flooded
road.
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