“The pump’s all right,” said Dr. O’Grady. “Just sit where you are for a moment and I’ll fetch you some water. It may give you typhoid. I wouldn’t drink it myself without boiling it, but that’s your look out.” He left the moor and returned a few minutes later with a large tumbler of cold water. Doyle looked at it mournfully. He knew perfectly well that the doctor had both whisky and tea in the house, but he recognised the impossibility of getting either the one or the other. He raised the glass to his mouth. “Glory be to God,” he said, “but it’s the first time I’ve wetted my lips with the same this twenty years!” “It will do you a lot of good if it doesn’t give you typhoid,” said Dr. O’Grady. “How did you get so frightfully thirsty?” The question was natural. Doyle drank the whole tumbler of water at a draught. There was no doubt that he had been very thirsty. “Will you tell me now,” he said, “what had that one in the temper she was in?” “Mrs. Ford,” said Dr. O’Grady, “was annoyed because she thought she wasn’t going to be given a chance of making herself agreeable to the Lord-Lieutenant.” “If she speaks to the Lord-Lieutenant,” said Doyle, “after the fashion she was speaking to me, it’s likely that she’ll not get the chance of making herself agreeable to him a second time. Devil such a temper I ever saw any woman in, and I’ve seen some in my day.” “I know she’d be a bit savage. I hoped you wouldn’t have met her.” “I did meet her. Wasn’t she turning in at the gate at the same time that I was myself? ‘There’s a letter here, ma’am,’ says I, ‘that the doctor told me I was to give to you,’ ‘I suppose it was half an hour ago,’ said she, ‘that he told you that,’ Well, I pulled the letter out of my pocket, and I gave it a rub along the side of my pants the same as you told me. ‘I suppose you’re doing that,’ said she, ‘to put some dirt on it, to make it look,’ said she, ‘as if it had been in your pocket a week.’” “You wouldn’t think to look at her that she was so cute,” said Dr. O’Grady. “What did you say?” “I said nothing either good or bad,” said Doyle, “only that it was to get the dirt off the letter, and not to be putting it on that I was giving it a bit of a rub. Well, she took the letter and she opened it. Then she looked me straight in the face. ‘When did you get this letter from the doctor?’ says she. So I told her it was last Friday you give it to me, and that I hadn’t seen you since, and didn’t care a great deal if I never seen you again. ‘You impudent blackguard,’ says she, ‘the letter’s not an hour written. The ink’s not more than just dry on it yet,’ ‘I’m surprised,’ said I, ‘that it’s that much itself. It’s dripping wet I’d expect it to be with the sweat I’m in this minute on account of the way I’ve run to give it to you.’”