Page:The Fruit of the Tree (Wharton 1907).djvu/24

Rh “Verbally?”

“No—he showed me Disbrow’s letter.”

For a moment or two they walked on silently through the quiet street; then she said, in a voice still stirred with feeling: “As I told you this afternoon, Dr. Disbrow has said nothing in my hearing.”

“And Mrs. Ogan?”

“Oh, Mrs. Ogan—” Her voice broke in a ripple of irony. “Mrs. Ogan ‘feels it to be such a beautiful dispensation, my dear, that, owing to a death that very morning in the surgical ward, we happened to have a bed ready for the poor man within three hours of the accident.'" She had exchanged her deep throat-tones for a high reedy note which perfectly simulated the matron’s lady-like inﬂections.

Amherst, at the change, turned on her with a boyish burst of laughter: she joined in it, and for a moment they were blent in that closest of unions, the discovery of a common fund of humour.

She was the ﬁrst to grow grave. “That three hours’ delay didn’t help matters—how is it there is no emergency hospital at the mills?”

Amherst laughed again, but in a different key. “That’s part of the larger question, which we haven’t time for now.” He waited a moment, and then added: “You’ve not yet given me your own impression of Dillon’s case.” [ 12 ]