Page:The Specimen Case.djvu/142

Rh office, opened the bottles and filled the glasses with the most businesslike expertness and then continued the narrative of Miss Marsh's remarkable experience.

"The thing Lukie was most afraid of was that it might make trouble with William Hill's people if they heard that she had been to consult the horse-doctor. The Hills, especially William's mother, were strict herbalists and regarded all other forms of medicine as sinful and poisonous. Lukie and William had been more or less engaged for seventeen years, and, as she said to me, she could not afford at her age to throw all that time away and begin again.

"Doubtless it would have been better if she had thought of that at the beginning and not gone, but she was always one for gaiety and things had been pretty quiet at Roffey last year. It was wet for the Flower Show and the black missionary man who was to lecture on 'Savage Africa' couldn't find the place and never came. Everyone was talking about this Hankins; so one day Lukie persuaded Jane to go with her to Crossgate, picking a time when the fewest people who might know her were likely to be about.

"Of course she didn't go for mere curiosity. For some time back she'd had a notion that something that oughtn't to be there was growing somewhere down her throat. She couldn't see it, and couldn't feel it, and it didn't exactly hurt, but the idea worried her whenever she remembered it. As she said, it might be only fancy, but it was a good opportunity to kill two birds with one stone.

"Jane stayed outside in the market-place because from what she'd heard she thought that the sight of Hankins's life-sized pictures would make her feel queer; and besides they weren't quite sure but what he would charge double if both of them went in.