III
Dr. Lord was a young man of thirty-two. He had sandy hair, a pleasantly ugly freckled¹ face and aremarkably square jaw². His eyes were a keen, piercing light blue.
“Good morning, Mrs. Welman,” he said.
“Good morning, Dr. Lord. This is my niece, Miss Carlisle.”
A very obvious admiration³ sprang into Dr. Lord’s transparent⁴ face. He said, “How do you do?”
The hand that Elinor extended to him he took rather gingerly as though he thought he might breakit.
Mrs. Welman went on:
“Elinor and my nephew have come down to cheer me up.”
“Splendid!” said Dr. Lord. “Just what you need! It will do you a lot of good, I am sure, Mrs.
Welman.”
He was still looking at Elinor with obvious admiration.
Elinor said, moving towards the door:
“Perhaps I shall see you before you go, Dr. Lord?”
“Oh—er—yes, of course.”
She went out, shutting the door behind her. Dr. Lord approached the bed, Nurse O’Brienfluttering behind him.
Mrs. Welman said with a twinkle:
“Going through the usual bag of tricks, Doctor: pulse, respiration⁵, temperature? What humbugsyou doctors are!”
Nurse O’Brien said with a sigh:
“Oh, Mrs. Welman. What a thing, now, to be saying to the doctor!”
Dr. Lord said with a twinkle:
“Mrs. Welman sees through me, Nurse! All the same, Mrs. Welman, I’ve got to do my stuff,you know. The trouble with me is I’ve never learnt the right bedside manner.”
“Your bedside manner’s all right. Actually you’re rather proud of it.”
Peter Lord chuckled⁷ and remarked:
“That’s what you say.”
After a few routine questions had been asked and answered, Dr. Lord leant back in his chair andsmiled at his patient.
“Well,” he said. “You’re going on splendidly.”
Laura Welman said: “So I shall be up and walking round the house in a few weeks’ time?”

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