“Indeed?”

“Oh, yes. We’ve got a day-nurse for him but there’s no night-nurse to be had anywhere so I’m stop-gapping. To help Dr. Mark out, really.”

“Dr. Mark Lacklander is attending his grandfather?”

“Yes. He had a second opinion but more for his own satisfaction than anything else. But there! Talking out of school! I’m ashamed of you, Kettle.”

“I’m very discreet,” said Mr. Phinn.

“So’m I, really. Well, I suppose I had better go on me way rejoicing.”

Nurse Kettle did a tentative back-pedal and started to wriggle her foot out of the interstices in Mr. Phinn’s garden gate. He disenagaged a sated kitten from its mother and rubbed it against his ill-shaven cheek.

“Is he conscious?” he asked.

“Off and on. Bit confused. There now! Gossiping again! Talking of gossip,” said Nurse Kettle with a twinkle, “I see the Colonel’s out for the evening rise.”

An extraordinary change at once took place in Mr. Phinn. His face became suffused with purple, his eyes glittered and he bared his teeth in a canine grin.

“A hideous curse upon his sport,” he said. “Where is he?”

“Just below the bridge.”

“Let him venture a handspan above it and I’ll report him to the authorities. What fly has he mounted? Has he caught anything?”

“I couldn’t see,” said Nurse Kettle, already regretting her part in the conversation, “from the top of Watt’s Hill.”

Mr. Phinn replaced the kitten.

“It is a dreadful thing to say about a fellow-creature,” he said, “a shocking thing. But I do say advisedly and deliberately that I suspect Colonel Cartarette of having recourse to improper practices.”

It was Nurse Kettle’s turn to blush.

“I am sure I don’t know to what you refer,” she said.

“Bread! Worms!” said Mr. Phinn, spreading his arms. “Anything! Tickling, even! I’d put it as low as that.”