"It's I that want Dr. Veiga's opinion about you, and I must insist on having it. And what's more, you know I've never cared for your friend Dr. Plott. He never seems to be interested. He scarcely listens to what you have to say. He scarcely examines you. He just makes you think your health is of no importance at all, and it doesn't really matter whether you're ill or well, and that you may get better or you mayn't, and that he'll humour you by sending you a bottle of something." "Stuff!" said Mr. Prohack. "He's a first-rate fellow. No infernal nonsense about _him!_ And what do _you_ know about Veiga? I should like to be informed." "I met him at Mrs. Cunliff's. He cured her of cancer." "You told me Mrs. Cunliff hadn't got cancer at all." "Well, it was Dr. Veiga who found out she hadn't, and stopped the operation just in time. She says he saved her life, and she's quite right. He's wonderful." Mrs. Prohack was now sitting on the bed. She gazed at her husband's features with acute apprehension and yet with persuasive grace. "Oh! Arthur!" she murmured, "you are a worry to me!" Mr. Prohack, not being an ordinary Englishman, knew himself beaten--for the second time that morning. He dared not trifle with his wife in her earnest, lofty mood. "I bet you Veiga won't come," said Mr. Prohack. "He will come," said Mrs. Prohack blandly. "How do you know?" "Because he told me he'd come at once if ever I asked him. He's a perfect dear." "Oh! I know the sort!" Mr. Prohack said sarcastically. "And you'll see the fee he'll charge!" "When it's a question of health money doesn't matter." "It doesn't matter when you've got the money. You'd never have dreamed of having Veiga this time yesterday. You wouldn't even have sent for old Plott." Mrs. Prohack merely kissed her husband again, with a kind of ineffable resignation. Then Machin came in with her breakfast, and said that Dr. Veiga would be round shortly, and was told to telephone to the Treasury that her master was ill in bed. "And what about my breakfast?" the victim enquired with irony. "Give me some of your egg." "No, dearest, egg is the very last thing you should have with that colour." "Well, if you'd like to know, I don't want any breakfast. Couldn't eat any." "There you are!" Mrs. Prohack exclaimed triumphantly. "And yet you swear you aren't ill! That just shows.... It will be quite the best thing for you not to take anything until Dr. Veiga's been." Mr. Prohack, helpless, examined the ceiling, and decided to go to the office in the afternoon. He tried to be unhappy but couldn't. Eve was too funny, too delicious, too exquisitely and ingenuously "firm," too blissful in having him at her mercy, for him to be unhappy.... To say nothing of the hundred thousand pounds! And he knew that Eve also was secretly revelling in the hundred thousand pounds. Dr. Veiga was her first bite at it. * * * * * II