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clinic, impressed and frightened in equal parts. It wasn’t really intended to, but the Out-Patient Clinic sometimes had the same effect on those unfamiliar with it as the Hall of Justice in the Doge’s Palace in Venice—walking the length of which was said to have concentrated the minds of those brought to trial there more than somewhat.
    Dr Friar said, some of his own aching tiredness gone now, ‘So that was when you got this feeling again, was it, Mrs Allison?’
    â€˜That’s right,’ she responded absently, her eyes on his hands. ‘What are you going to do with that thing there, then?’
    â€˜Just putting it round your arm, that’s all. It won’t hurt.’ He picked up his stethoscope. ‘And then I’m going to have a listen to your ticker.’
    â€˜â€™T’aint what it used to be,’ she wheezed.
    â€˜No.’
    â€˜And my ankles swell something awful by nighttime.’
    â€˜Yes, I’m sure they do.’ Martin Friar glanced down at her bulging ankles and stout, lace-up shoes and made another note in her record. Her blood pressure was sky-high, of course. He didn’t like the colour of Mrs Allison’s lips either but he did not say so. Instead he asked, ‘What are you like after a rest?’
    â€˜Rest?’ She stared at him as if he was speaking another language. Then her face cleared. ‘Oh, you mean Sundays, Doctor …’
    He hadn’t meant Sundays but he let her go on.
    â€˜Well, there’s still always feeding the stock, of course, but I do put my feet up for a bit in the afternoons Sundays sometimes—’
    Doctor and patient both regarded Mrs Allison’s swollen, pitted legs. She said, ‘But it doesn’t seem to make a lot of difference to the pain up here.’
    â€˜No.’ Dr Friar nodded.
    â€˜That’s why my own doctor thought I ought to come up to the hospital.’
    â€˜Quite right,’ said the Senior Registrar, thinking—but not saying—that her own doctor—the old fool—should have sent her up to see them months ago. ‘Because,’ he went on sedulously, ‘I think we may be able to do something for you.’
    â€˜I didn’t want to come, see,’ she said again, not listening, ‘because I’ve never been to hospital before.’
    â€˜One of your problems,’ said Martin Friar, not listening either, ‘is that your arteries have got all furred up—a bit like an old water pipe does—and the blood can’t flow through like it used to.’
    Her face cleared. ‘The water’s terrible hard out our way, Doctor, and I do feel a great throbbing sometimes.’
    â€˜You will,’ he said, not bothering to try to dispel her confusion. ‘Now, what we need to do is to attempt to dissolve all the stuff that’s stuck on the inside of your arteries without having to send you for an operation.’
    â€˜I shouldn’t want to have an operation,’ she said automatically.
    â€˜There are two treatments that we could give you,’ said Dr Friar, ignoring this too. ‘Actually, as it happens we’re—that is, Dr Meggie is—testing one of the new ones here at St Ninian’s.’
    â€˜Well, I never,’ she said, suitably impressed.
    â€˜And what we’d really like to do, Mrs Allison, is to include you in one of our clinical trials by putting you on a course of one of these new tablets and seeing how you get on.’
    She nodded uncomprehendingly.
    â€˜I shan’t even know myself which one of the two drugs we’re giving you,’ said Martin Friar, adding with a winning smile, ‘That’s so I shan’t be improperly influencing you in any way by what I say about the tablets when I prescribe them for you.’
    â€˜Thank you, Doctor,’ she murmured, now even more mystified than ever. She’d come up to St Ninian’s to be influenced and