Dr. Symes, brisk and active for all his sixty years and grey head, hopped nimbly onto his bicycle, and rode off, feeling that Maud had done him good. Apart from the Raynhams, his notions of the British aristocracy were founded on those curious volumes known as society novels, books which his wife read aloud to him in the evening with horrified gusto. These works presented this class in a more lurid but less pleasant light. But Lord Thurso and his sister were both so simple and so good, to use that ordinary word in its most ordinary sense. They made no more fuss over the reception of forty patients suffering from typhoid into the house than they would have made over a few friends dropping in to tea. No thought of risk or inconvenience seemed to have occurred to either of them; it appeared to them the most natural thing in the world that the house should be turned into a hospital, and though professionally he believed that there was no risk, still he felt that the wicked countesses and marchionesses in "Lepers" or "Lady Babylon" would not have behaved quite like this. Indeed, for one half moment he let himself wonder what even Mrs. Symes would have said if he had suggested taking cases into their house. But it had seemed to that beautiful girl whom he had left on the doorstep with her fishing-rod in one hand and a landing-net weighed down with half a dozen sea-trout in the other a perfectly natural thing to do. It was this courageous acceptation of events that did him good. * * * * * Thurso, to his sister's great relief, came down to dinner in the most equable and cheerful spirits. All trace of his headache had vanished, and Maud thought that Dr. Symes must have been mistaken about it, for, as he had said, he had only guessed that Thurso must be in great pain. In any case, it was her part to try to take his thoughts away from fever and neuralgia, and all the darker side of things, and she instantly began on her own poaching comedy by the river. "Thurso, I have broken the record to-day," she said. "I have done the most awful thing that has ever been done. After you went out this morning, I took a rod down to the river to look about for sea-trout, and was firm in a salmon--oh no, he saw me hook it--when Mr. Bertie Cochrane appeared. How could you forget to tell me you had let the fishing? There I was, tied to it--to his fish. He watched me play it. And, of course, I didn't know him from Adam." For the moment Thurso was almost as horrified as Maud had been. "Good Lord!" he said; "I hope you lost the fish." "Not at all. It was entirely owing to Mr. Cochrane that I landed it, for in the nick of time down came Duncan--his gillie, not ours at all--with a gaff. Mr. Cochrane looked on with interest and sympathy." Thurso had laid down his knife and fork, and a huge grin was beginning to take the place of his horror. "Go on, quick," he said.