"I'm used to this sort of work. I come up here pretty often," he
said. "I've the family throat too."
"You're a good man," I said. "A very good man."
He turned towards me in the evening light among the beeches, and
his face was changed to what it might have been a generation
before.
"You see," he said huskily, "there was the youngest--Agnes.
Before she fell ill, you know. But she didn't like leaving her
sisters. Never would." He hurried on with his odd-shaped load and
left me among the ruins of my black theories. The man with that
face had done Agnes Moultrie no wrong.
We never played our game. I was waked between two and three in
the morning from my hygienic bed by Baxter in an ulster over
orange and white pyjamas, which I should never have suspected
from his character.
"My cousin has had some sort of a seizure," he said. "Will you
come? I don't want to wake the doctor. Don't want to make a
scandal. Quick!"
So I came quickly, and led by the white-haired Arthurs in a
jacket and petticoat, entered a double-bedded room reeking with
steam and Friar's Balsam.
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