Page:Herbert Jenkins - The Rain Girl.djvu/70

 "Very well, I'll put off the start until Monday. Let's see, that'll be June 9th."

Tallis nodded approval.

"You and my host and the nurse and the whole blessed boiling of you have assumed a pretty serious responsibility," continued Beresford. "You've dragged me back resisting into this world of vain endeavour, and I'm not sure that you haven't done an extremely injudicious thing; but that's your affair, not mine."

"What about the girl?" enquired Tallis.

"I ought to be annoyed with you," continued Beresford, ignoring the question, "as a man who has been forced to eat a meal he didn't want and is then asked to pay for it. You've literally hauled me back to earth by the heels; but as I say, that's your affair, not mine."

"Well," said Tallis as he rose and pocketed his pipe, "life always was a funny sort of muddle; but Kaiser Bill has added to its difficulties. I'm not at all sure that we doctors don't do more harm in saving people than in"

"Killing them," suggested Beresford.

"Letting them die as they deserve," concluded Tallis quietly. "So long," and he strolled across the lawn into "The Two Dragons," leaving his patient to his thoughts.

Beresford found himself looking forward to the day of his emancipation with all the eagerness of a schoolboy anticipating the summer holidays. The past few weeks had resulted in an entire