“How do you know, sir?” cried Mrs Bolter, sharply.
“From what one reads, Mary. I never had a wife before; and I never flatter you.”
“No, sir, but you try something else; and I tell you I will not submit to be imposed upon!”
“I’m sure, my dear, I never impose upon you.”
“Indeed, sir; then what is this you propose doing? Why do you want to go away for three days?”
“Collecting, my dear.”
“Without Arthur? Now look here, Bolter, the very fact of your wanting to go collecting without Arthur, whom you always talk about as being a brother naturalist, looks suspicious.”
“Indeed, my dear, I do want to go collecting.”
“Collecting? Rubbish!”
“No, my dear, it is not. I’m afraid you will never realise the value of my specimens.”
“You are going collecting, then?” said Mrs Doctor.
“Yes, my dear.”
“Without Arthur?”
“Yes; he does not get on very well in the jungle; and he is rather awkward in a boat.”
“Then I shall go with you myself,” said the little lady, decidedly.
“You – you go with me, Mary,” he said, staring.
“Yes, certainly.”
“But the thorns, and mud, and heat, and mosquitoes, my dear?”
“If they will not hurt you, Henry, they will not hurt me,” said the little lady.
“But they would hurt you, my dear. Of course I should like to have you, but it would be impossible! I shall only be away three days.”
“But the place is full of old stones and skins that smell atrociously, and wretched flies and beetles with pins stuck through their bodies, and I’m sure I can’t think why you want more.”
“For the learned societies in London, my dear. You forget that I am a corresponding member to several.”
“Oh, no, I don’t,” said Mrs Bolter. “I don’t forget that you make it an excuse for sitting up all night smoking and drinking cold whiskey and water, sir, because you have writing to do instead of coming to bed.”
The doctor shrugged his shoulders.
“My dear,” he said, “you would be a perfect woman if you only cared for science.”
“You never said a word to me, sir, about caring for science when I consented to come out with you to this dreadful, hot, damp place, where everything that does not turn mouldy is eaten by ants.”
“The damp and the ants are great nuisances, my dear,” said the doctor. “They have destroyed numbers of my best specimens.”
“They have destroyed my beautiful piano that I was foolish enough to bring out,” said Mrs Bolter. “Grey Stuart opened it yesterday, and the damp has melted the glue, and the ants have eaten up all the leather of the hammers. The wires are rusty, and the instrument is totally spoiled.”
“Never mind, my dear, so long as the climate does not affect your constitution,” said the doctor, cheerfully.
“Oh, by the way,” said Mrs Bolter, “that reminds me of two things. First of all, Bolter, I will not have you so fond of talking to the young ladies at the dinner parties to which we go. You remember what I said to you about your conduct with Miss Morrison?”
“Yes, my dear, perfectly,” said the doctor, with a sigh.
“Secondly, about medicine. Now, it is of no use for you to deny it, for I feel as sure as can be that you have been giving me some medicine on the sly these last few days.”
“Why, my darling!” cried the doctor.
“It is of no use for you to put on that injured expression, Henry, because I know; and mind this, I don’t accuse you of trying to poison me, but of trying experiments with new-fangled drugs, and I tell you I won’t have it.”
The doctor protested his innocence, but the lady was not convinced; and apparently under the impression that it would be as well to submit, he allowed her to go on till she reached the top of her bent, when she suddenly changed the topic.
“Ah, there was something else I wanted to say to you,” she said sharply. “How about Helen Perowne?”
This was too much for the doctor’s equanimity, and he gave the table a bang with his fist.
“I declare it’s too bad,” he exclaimed, wrathfully now. He had submitted to all that had been said before with a few protestations and shrugs of the shoulders, but now he fired up. “I have never hardly said a civil word to the girl in my life, for I protest that I utterly detest the handsome, heartless, coquettish creature. Of all the unjust women I ever met, Mary, you are about the worst.”
A casual observer would have set Mrs Doctor Bolter down as an extremely prejudiced, suspicious woman of a highly-jealous temperament; but then a casual observer would not have known her real nature.
If he had seen her now, as she sank back in her chair, and the pleasant dimples and puckers came into her face, he would have understood much better how it was that the doctor had persuaded her to leave her maiden state to come and share his lot.
For as the doctor turned redder in the face and then purple, she smiled and shook a little round white finger at him.
“A guilty conscience needs no accuser,” she said. “I never accused you, sir, of flirting with Helen Perowne; but as soon as I mentioned her name you began to defend yourself.”
“I don’t care,” cried the doctor, “I confess I have said complimentary and pleasant things to all the ladies of the station, both old and young; not that they think anything of it, for I’m only the doctor; while as to Helen Perowne, last time her father asked me to see and prescribe for her, and she began to make eyes at me, and put forth her blandishments – ”
“Oh, you confess that, sir?”
“Confess it?” cried the doctor, stoutly. “Why she does that to every man she sees! I believe if her father took her to Madame Tussaud’s – You remember my taking you to Madame Tussaud’s, my dear?”
“Oh, yes, I remember,” said Mrs Bolter.
“Well, I honestly believe that if she were taken there she’d begin making eyes at the wax figures.”
“Indeed!” said Mrs Bolter, stiffly. “And so she began to make eyes at you!”
“That she did, the jade,” said the doctor, chuckling, “and – and – ha, ha, ha – ho, ho, ho! don’t – ha, ha, ha! – say a word about it, my dear – there was nothing the matter with her but young girl’s whimsical fancies; and she made me so cross with her fads and languishing airs, and then by making such a dead set at me, that I – ha, ha, ha – ho, ho, ho – ”
“Bolter,” exclaimed Mrs B, “if you confess to me that you kissed her I’ll have a divorce – I’ll go straight back to England?”
“Kiss her? Not I! – ho, ho, ho! – I gave her such a dose; and I kept her extremely poorly for about a week. She – she hates me like she does physic. Oh, dear me!”
The doctor wiped his eyes, burst into another fit of laughing, and then, after another wipe at his eyes, his face smoothed down and he grew composed.
“Then it’s a pity you don’t give her another dose of medicine,” said his lady, “and prevent her doing so much mischief as she is doing here.”
“But really, my dear, you have no right to accuse me of being extra polite to Helen Perowne.”
“I did not, and I was not about to accuse you of being extra polite to Helen Perowne —extra polite, as you call it, sir;