"Oh, yes, very true," said Maitland, recovering himself. "I have no doubt you treated him with great judgment. It is a case, too, for much caution. Forty-seven and two G's," and he hastily turned over the leaves of his little book, muttering continually, "and two G's, forty-six, forty-seven, with two B's, two F's. Ah! here it is. Shivering attacks are dangerous--are they--in these cases?"
"In which cases?" asked the doctor; for his shrewd intelligence at once perceived the double object which Maitland was trying to contemplate.
"In a word, then," continued Maitland, not heeding the doctor's question, but bending his gaze fixedly on the piece of paper before him, scrawled over and blotted by his own hand,--"in a word, then, a man of seventy, seized with paralysis, and, though partially rallied by bleeding, attacked with shivering, is in a very critical state? But how long might he live in that way?"
"We are not now speaking of Commodore Graham, I apprehend?" asked the doctor, slyly.
"No; I am simply putting a case,--a possible case, Doctors, I know, are not fond of these imagined emergencies; lawyers like them."
"Doctors dislike them," broke in Reede, "because they are never given to them in any completeness,--every important sign of pulse and tongue and temperature omitted--"
"Of course you are right," said Maitland, crumpling up the telegram and the other papers; "and now for the Commodore. You are not apprehensive of anything serious, I hope?"
"It 's an anxious case, sir,--a very anxious case; he 's eighty-four."
"Eighty-four!" repeated Maitland, to whom the words conveyed a considerable significance.
"Eighty-four!" repeated the other, once more. "No one would suspect it. Why, Sally Graham is the same age as my wife; they were at school together."
Too polite to push a question which involved a double-shotted answer, Maitland merely said, "Indeed!" and, after a slight pause, added, "You said, I think, that the road to Dundalk led past Commodore Graham's cottage?"
"May I offer you a seat with me? I am going that way. I have received news which calls me suddenly to England."
"I thank you much, but I have some visits yet to make before I return to Port-Graham. I promised to stop the night there."