"Drinking?" asked Maud. "Why, he is a tee-totaller!"
"The worst sort of drunkard," remarked Thurso rather cynically.
Thurso looked up at her, and then nodded.
"Quite right," he said; "it's a pity. Sorry."
"You old darling! But Duncan's as sober as I am. Soberer. Go on. It interests me."
"Well, it all leads back to Mr. Cochrane again," he said. "Don't interrupt. I looked in to-night, as I told you, and there was Duncan sitting by his wife's bedside, nursing the baby, who was, with extraordinary gurgles, trying to swarm up his beard. And his wife lay there, different, changed, with life instead of death in her face. But fancy bringing a baby into a room where there is typhoid! So I got Duncan and the child out, and cursed him, and told him that his wife was really on the mend, as the nurse had just told me. I thought he would like to know that, but apparently he had known it all day. Our Mr. Cochrane had told him this morning that his wife was getting better all the time."
"Well, but how did he know?" asked Thurso. "Twelve hours ago they thought she couldn't live through the day. And what the deuce has our Mr. Cochrane got to do with it? Who is he? What is he? How did he know?"
Maud had no reply to this at once; "our Mr. Cochrane" had repudiated preaching on his own account--clearly, then, it was not her business to state his views.
"Well, he hasn't done any harm, anyhow," she said.
"Of course not; but it's an odd coincidence. Mr. Cochrane tells Duncan that his wife is getting better, and Duncan has only got to walk home, and finds it is so. Oh, and another thing: Dr. Symes called there this afternoon, and Duncan kindly but quite firmly refused to let him in at all unless he promised not to give her any more medicine. So he promised, because when he saw her last she was absolutely past all hope; also, he doesn't much believe in medicines, though you needn't mention it. He saw, of course, the enormous improvement, and wanted to take her temperature, but Duncan again firmly, and with beaming smiles, would not allow it. I suppose he considered a thermometer a sort of modified medicine."
"Dr. Symes insisted, and eventually Duncan, with great respect, threw the thermometer out of the window. That is why I supposed he was drunk."