Mr. Sheldon was not slow to obey Mrs. Halliday's behest. He was departing on his quest breakfastless, when Nancy Woolper met him in the hall with a cup of tea. He accepted the cup almost mechanically from her hand, and took it into the parlour, whither Nancy followed him. Then for the first time he perceived that change in his housekeeper's face which had so startled Georgina Halliday. The change was somewhat modified now; but still the Nancy Woolper of to-day was not the Nancy Woolper of yesterday. "You're looking very queer, Nancy," said the dentist, gravely scrutinising the woman's face with his bright penetrating eyes. "Are you ill?" "Well, Mr. Philip, I have been rather queer all night,--sickish and faintish-like." "Ah, you've been over-fatiguing yourself in the sick-room, I daresay. Take care you don't knock yourself up." "No; it's not that, Mr. Philip. There's not many can stand hard work better than I can. It's not _that_ as made me ill. I took something last night that disagreed with me." "More fool you," said Mr. Sheldon curtly; "you ought to know better than to ill-use your digestive powers at your age. What was it? Hard cold meat and preternaturally green pickles, I suppose; or something of that kind." "No, sir; it was only a drop of beef-tea that I made for poor Mr. Halliday. And that oughtn't to have disagreed with a baby, you know, sir." "Oughtn't it?" cried the dentist disdainfully. "That's a little bit of vulgar ignorance, Mrs. Woolper. I suppose it was stuff that had been taken up to Mr. Halliday." "Yes, Mr. Philip; you took it up with your own hands." "Ah, to be sure; so I did. Very well, then, Mrs. Woolper, if you knew as much about atmospheric influences as I do, you'd know that food which has been standing for hours in the pestilential air of a fever-patient's room isn't fit for anybody to eat. The stuff made you sick, I suppose." "Yes, sir; sick to my very heart," answered the Yorkshirewoman, with a strange mournfulness in her voice. "Let that be a warning to you, then. Don't take anything more that comes down from the sick-room." "I don't think there'll be any chance of my doing that long, sir." "What do you mean?" "I don't fancy Mr. Halliday is long for this world." "Ah, you women are always ravens." "Unless the strange doctor can do something to cure him. O, pray bring a clever man who will be able to cure that poor helpless creature upstairs. Think, Mr. Philip, how you and him used to be friends and playfellows,--brothers almost,--when you was both bits of boys. Think how bad it might seem to evil-minded folks if he died under your roof." The dentist had been standing near the door drinking his tea during this conversation; and now for the first time he looked at his housekeeper with an expression of unmitigated astonishment.