He said something about not overstepping a boundary - too - something between doctor and patient.
He got the master quieted a bit and then he said,
'You'll be late at your office, you know.
You'd better be off.
Just think things over quietly.
I think you'll realize that the whole business is a mare's nest.
I'll just wash my hands here before I go on to my next case.
Now you think it over, my dear fellow.
I can assure you that the whole thing arises out of your wife's disordered imagination.'
"And the master he said,
'I don't know what to think.'
"And he come out - and of course I was brushing hard, but he never even noticed me.
I thought afterward he looked ill.
The doctor he was whistling quite cheerily and washing his hands in the dressing-room where there was hot and cold laid on.
And presently he came out too with his bag, and he spoke to me very nicely and cheerily as he always did and he went down the stairs quite cheerful and gay and his usual self.
So, you see, I'm quite sure as he hadn't done anything wrong.
It was all her."
"And then Craddock got this anthrax?"
"Yes, I think he'd got it already.
The mistress she nursed him very devoted, but he died.
Lovely wreaths there was at the funeral."
"And afterward?
Did Doctor Roberts come to the house again?"
"No, he didn't, Nosy!
You've got some grudge against him.
I tell you there was nothing in it.
If there were he'd have married her when the master was dead, wouldn't he?
And he never did.
No such fool.
He'd taken her measure all right.
She used to ring him up though, but somehow he was never in.
And then she sold the house and we all got our notices and she went abroad to Egypt."
"And you didn't see Doctor Roberts in all that time."
"No.
She did, because she went to him to have this - what do you call it - noclation against the typhoid fever.
She came back with her arm ever so sore with it.
If you ask me, he made it clear to her then that there was nothing doing.
She didn't ring him up no more and she went off very cheerful with a lovely lot of new clothes - all light colors although it was the middle of winter, but she said it would be all sunshine and hot out there."
"That's right," said Sergeant O'Connor. "It's too hot, sometimes, I've heard.
She died out there.
You know that, I suppose?"
"No, indeed I didn't.
Well, fancy that!
She may have been worse than I thought, poor soul." She added with a sigh, "I wonder what they did with all that lovely lot of clothes?
They're blacks out there, so they couldn't wear them."
"You'd have looked a treat in them, I expect," said Sergeant O'Connor.
"Impudence," said Elsie.
"Well, you won't have my impudence much longer," said Sergeant O'Connor. "I've got to go away on business for my firm."
"You going for long?"
"May be going abroad," said the sergeant.