She has a stern eye, and lips that shut tightly, and I feel that if I were an

under housemaid or a kitchenmaid I should run for my life whenever I heard her

coming.

 

“Good morning, Dr. Sheppard,” said Miss Russell. “I should be much obliged if

you would take a look at my knee.”

 

I took a look, but, truth to tell, I was very little wiser when I had done so.

Miss Russell’s account of vague pains was so unconvincing that with a woman of

less integrity of character I should have suspected a trumped-up tale. It did

cross my mind for one moment that Miss Russell might have deliberately invented

this affection of the knee in order to pump me on the subject of Mrs. Ferrars’s

death, but I soon saw that there, at least, I had misjudged her. She made a

brief reference to the tragedy, nothing more. Yet she certainly seemed disposed

to linger and chat.

 

“Well, thank you very much for this bottle of liniment, doctor,” she said at

last. “Not that I believe it will do the least good.”

 

I didn’t think it would either, but I protested in duty bound. After all, it

couldn’t do any harm, and one must stick up for the tools of one’s trade.

 

“I don’t believe in all these drugs,” said Miss Russell, her eyes sweeping over

my array of bottles disparagingly. “Drugs do a lot of harm. Look at the cocaine

habit.”