Page:The Rejuvenation Of Miss Semaphore.pdf/132

 CHAPTER XIII.

THE MEDICAL LADY BAFFLED.

No. 37, Beaconsfield Gardens, South Kensington, was in a ferment of excitement. Something had happened. The boarders did not quite know what, but there was in the air that electrical unrest that spreads so rapidly from one individual to another.

The mystery of Miss Semaphore's illness was under discussion. What ailed her? She had eaten nothing for two days. Was she really better? Was she worse? Why this secrecy and embarrassment on the part of the usually garrulous and impulsive Prudence? Why was no doctor called in? Why, why, why, in a thousand forms, was the favourite interrogative pronoun on the lips of the ladies and gentlemen as they sat round the fire after dinner and discussed something more interesting to them than the Daily Telegraph, that oracle beloved of boarding-houses.