Page:Herbert Jenkins - The Rain Girl.djvu/57

 good landlord but in nothing else—exhausted his ideas within the space of five minutes. With great regularity he entered the sick-room each morning at eleven, at eleven-five he would take his departure, more genial, more amiable, and more obviously good-hearted than ever. The doctor was the most welcome visitor of all; but he was a busy man.

"If the microbes of this neighbourhood were only sociable," he would say, "I might spend more time with you. As it is they're wanderers to a germ, and get as far as possible from each other before descending upon my patients. The result is that I am kept rushing from place to place with phial and lancet, sedative and purge, all because of the nomadic habits of these precious bacilli."

These unprofessional visits from the doctor Beresford looked forward to as intellectual oases in the desert of his own thoughts. He had endeavoured to emulate Xavier Le Maistre; but he had to confess to himself that Voyages Autour de ma Chambre were impossible to him, so there remained only the doctor.

One evening towards the end of the month they sat charting beside the bedroom fire, Beresford wrapped in a heavy dressing-gown borrowed from the landlord. They had been talking of the war and the social upheaval that was following it.

"It was all so strange coming back here," said Beresford, "a lot of the fellows remarked upon it. Somehow or other we didn't seem to belong—we didn't seem to fit in, you know. When I came back