Part 27 (1/2)
”A good thing too. It'd have been a good thing if it had been the death of both of them. I've no bowels for such tomfoolery.
Where is she? What's she doing? Is she married to the other fool? If she is, don't they both wish that they were dead?”
”You've a sharp tongue, Andrew--if your wits were like it! Not all married folks wish that they were dead; there's just as much desire to live among the married as among the single--maybe more. To hear you talk one would suppose that one had only to remain single to be happy. You and I know better than that.”
”Speak for yourself, David, speak for yourself--I'm happy enough.”
”Then your looks belie you.”
”What's the matter with my looks, you old croaker?”
”I'm a doctor of medicine, Andrew McTavish; I've learned to turn the smoothest side to a patient; so you must excuse me if to your inquiry I return no answer.”
”After the dinner I've given him!”
”It's the ill-a.s.sorted food you have caused me to cram down my throat that I'm beginning to fancy has given me a touch of the spleen.”
”Something has. The next time you dine in this house it will be off porridge.”
”We'll leave the next time till it comes. To return to Margaret Wallace. She's not married yet, and, so far as I can judge, she's not likely to be. It's want of pence, both with him and with her. If she had some of Cuthbert Grahame's money, as she ought to have, it'd make all the difference.”
”It's in part your fault that she hasn't.”
”I'm not denying it, and I'm not forgetting it. If I've been guilty of the unforgivable sin, it was when I brought that woman to Cuthbert Grahame's bedside. I sometimes think that I'll see it chalked up against me in letters of fire when I'm brought up before the throne.”
”Stuff!”
”Maybe--to you. You're devoid of decent feeling, Andrew McTavish; to you all's stuff. What's become of the woman?”
”What woman?”
”She who calls herself Mrs. Grahame?”
”She calls herself Mrs. Grahame no longer.”
”How's that?”
”She's married again.”
”The creature! The poor fool she's married! What is his name?”
”Gregory Lamb.”
Dr. Twelves rose from his chair as if impelled by a spring.
Opening his mouth in apparent forgetfulness of what was between his lips, his cigar fell to the floor, where it remained apparently unnoticed.
”What's that?”
”What's what?”