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sister’s condition (I learned that the illness was cancer) to exercise much discernment, and she appeared to miss anything unusual in the appearance of Mary or of my father.
    On the day following this fleeting visit I returned from school to find my father looking rather more harassed than he had appeared even of late, and a strange and particularly offensive old woman in charge of the household. Mary was not to be seen, and my father told me abruptly that she was in bed seriously ill.
    The next two days seemed to be a kind of blur. I could not gather what was going on, but it seemed that the old woman was acting as a nurse to Mary; both the old woman and my father appeared to be labouring under extreme excitement, and in my father’s case, an additional emotion which I analysed as fear. Was he afraid that Mary might die? Such a theory hardly seemed to meet the case, for I knew that many of his previous patients had died and he had never before manifested any particular distress at the occurrences.
    To this strange, sinister atmosphere I returned from school at mid-day and in the evening, to partake of a wretchedly cooked meal hastily served to me by the old woman, spending my evenings alone in the sitting-room in futile attempts to grapple with home-work while my ears were strained to catch the sounds occasionally filtering down from the upper floor. Sometimes I could hear muffled cries; once I was aware of a continuous gabbling. Was Mary in a fever? Then would come an outburst from my father muffled by the dividing walls but sounding to me like the declaiming of a tipsy man. And whispered colloquies between my father and the old woman outside the surgery door.
    At last, on the evening of the second day, I returned from school to find a new-comer in the hall. I recognized him as another doctor, a Dr. Sims who practised in our district. He was standing with my father by the surgery door and the two seemed to be engaged in a furious argument. My father looked horribly pale and I thought, at the first glance, that he had been drinking. When he caught sight of me he drew Dr. Sims into the surgery and slammed the door; and the argument seemed to break out afresh. As I passed into the sitting-room I heard Dr. Sims say: “What do you expect me to do, eh? What can I do?” And a muttered reply from my father. Then something else from Dr. Sims which I could not catch, something about “professional reputation to consider.”
    I left the sitting-room door ajar and sat down at the table, trying to catch some more. But in a few minutes the door was pushed open and the old woman came in carrying a tray; giving me a quick, furtive look, she hastily set out my meal and left the room, closing the door behind her. But as she passed out I heard the surgery door open and my father and Dr. Sims come into the hall. “—if she does,” I heard the latter say, “you’ll be finished. And not only finished—” The rest of the sentence was cut off by the closing of the sitting-room door. A few moments later the hall door slammed and then, quite loudly, came my father’s voice: “Oh my God! Oh my God!” The surgery door banged.
    After gobbling down my tea I tried to fix my mind on my home-work, but I do not know how I managed to get through the evening. At about nine when I was beginning to wonder whether I had not better go up to bed, I heard the crunching of wheels outside the house: I went to the window and peered through the blinds. At that season of the year it was still light enough for me to make out a kind of van standing outside the house. The driver alighted and, coming up our path, knocked at the door while another man opened the back of the van and appeared to be pulling something out.
    I heard the old woman open the door and the murmur of voices. Then my father’s voice. The man who had knocked returned to the van and assisted the other in what he was doing. Then they both