New Doctor at Northmoor Read Free

her services, and that before Gwenny started the weeding she must have a nice cup of tea and some seedy cake. Not that she would let Gwenny do any weeding—they would settle down to a nice chat, the weeding forgotten—but Gwenny was always hopeful. She knew just where she would start—in the old strawberry bed by the warm rosy brick wall that was beginning to crumble, just outside the mo rn ing-room window.
    If the old lady looked smily and welcoming (unusual but not impossible) then Gwenny was prepared to have a nice long chat with her about the possibility of selling the place to someone other than her family, who only wanted it for old people. A prick of doubt assailed Gwenny about this. It now occurred to her that Mrs. Walker might like her mother ’ s idea—indeed, Mrs. Walker might be so eaten up with loneliness that she might sell on condition that she become the first inmate. People were funny. They changed. Gwenny felt personally that if she owned Fairmead, nothing would induce her to sell the old place to someone who would instal a lot of old people. Old people ought to go in a new and bright dwelling with ceilings that didn ’ t swoop away up into the shadows with a lot of cornices and twirly bits to collect the dust. Anyway, big gloomy rooms made people feel even more lonely, Gwenny decided.
    Then she stopped short. Mrs. Walker was not at any of the windows. Gwenny stood there, her slender boy ’ s figure and frank open face belying her age, so that the tall young man who stood back in one of the top rooms thought, with a nettled frown, that this was just another schoolgirl in from one of the surrounding villages, with some excuse or other to spend time on the property. He had already had two of them, and as their excuses were respectively collecting butterflies and collecting material for an essay on crumbling property, he had had some difficulty in persuading them to go.
    With a resigned sigh, he went down the shallow but quite lovely main staircase to the front door and stood staring at the girl.
    She saw him and walked towards him, quickening her pace with the realization that all was not well, for someone like this to be here.
    ‘ What ’ s the matter ?’ she gasped. ‘ Is it Mrs. Walker? Is she ill ?’
    ‘ You know her? ’ He frowned thoughtfully. Now that the girl was closer to him, she didn ’ t seem quite such a schoolgirl. He studied the delicate features and the great blue eyes and he felt very much the same as Mrs. Yeedon had done not so long ago, except that Mrs. Yeedon had been anxious from affection for Gwenny, whereas he felt no more than a clinical interest in what appeared to be the vague and teasing symptom of a disease he had wanted to specialize in since he had first qualified.
    ‘ Oh, yes, Mrs. Walker ’ s a friend of mine, ’ Gwenny said. ‘ Are you a doctor? ’ He looked like a doctor, he talked like a doctor; he was exactly how Gwenny privately thought a doctor should look. Not like her handsome, frivolous brother Laurence, not like her stout, balding, often tetchy father, but tall, strong, dark in a clever sort of way, terribly responsible and sure of himself, and indicating a strong interest in any ill person who might place themselves in his hands. Gwenny, who often felt not quite well, decided that this was just the sort of doctor she would like.
    He said shortly, ‘ I am, but not in my official capacity. It happens that Mrs. Walker is no longer here. She has gone to stay with some friends, where she will be taken proper care of. ’
    ‘ Then if you don ’ t mind, who are you, and what are you doing here? ’ Gwenny said faintly. Quite suddenly she was oddly afraid.
    He was silent for a moment. She thought he wasn ’ t going to answer her. There was that queer haze coming up from the ground again, and her hands felt like cotton wool, yet she must hang on to the handlebars or the bike would fall over. It was no place to think of such a thing, but it occurred to