Now, what do you think of it, doctor?"
Constance's eyes suddenly filled with tears.
"Ye'd had Spot a long time, hadn't ye?" he said sympathetically.
She nodded.
"When I was married," said she, "the first thing my husband did was to buy a fox-terrier, and ever since we've always had a fox-terrier in the house."
This was not true, but Constance was firmly convinced of its truth.
"It's very trying," said the doctor.
"I know when my Airedale died, I said to my wife I'd never have another dog--unless she could find me one that would live for ever.
Ye remember my Airedale?"
"Oh, quite well!"
"Well, my wife said I should be bound to have another one sooner or later, and the sooner the better.
She went straight off to Oldcastle and bought me a spaniel pup, and there was such a to-do training it that we hadn't too much time to think about Piper."
Constance regarded this procedure as somewhat callous, and she said so, tartly.
Then she recommenced the tale of Spot's death from the beginning, and took it as far as his burial, that afternoon, by Mr. Critchlow's manager, in the yard.
It had been necessary to remove and replace paving-stones.
"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.