“It isn’t a matter of favour but of right,” she replied, and while I wondered what she meant, a dishevelled woman plunged round the bend of the road, loose-haired, purple, almost lowing with agony as she ran. It was my rude, fat friend of the sweetmeat shop. The blind woman heard and stepped forward. “What is it, Mrs. Madehurst?” she asked. The woman flung her apron over her head and literally grovelled in the dust, crying that her grandchild was sick to death, that the local doctor was away fishing, that Jenny the mother was at her wits end, and so forth, with repetitions and bellowings. “Where’s the next nearest doctor?” I asked between paroxysms. “Madden will tell you. Go round to the house and take him with you. I’ll attend to this. Be quick!” She half-supported the fat woman into the shade. In two minutes I was blowing all the horns of Jericho under the front of the House Beautiful, and Madden, in the pantry, rose to the crisis like a butler and a man. A quarter of an hour at illegal speeds caught us a doctor five miles away. Within the half-hour we had decanted him, much interested in motors, at the door of the sweetmeat shop, and drew up the road to await the verdict. “Useful things cars,” said Madden, all man and no butler. “If I’d had one when mine took sick she wouldn’t have died.” “How was it?” I asked. “Croup. Mrs. Madden was away. No one knew what to do. I drove eight miles in a tax cart for the doctor. She was choked when we came back. This car ’d ha’ saved her. She’d have been close on ten now.” “I’m sorry,” I said. “I thought you were rather fond of children from what you told me going to the cross-roads the other day.” “Have you seen ’em again, Sir—this mornin’?” “Yes, but they’re well broke to cars. I couldn’t get any of them within twenty yards of it.” He looked at me carefully as a scout considers a stranger—not as a menial should lift his eyes to his divinely appointed superior. “I wonder why,” he said just above the breath that he drew. We waited on. A light wind from the sea wandered up and down the long lines of the woods, and the wayside grasses, whitened already with summer dust, rose and bowed in sallow waves. A woman, wiping the suds off her arms, came out of the cottage next the sweetmeat shop. “I’ve be’n listenin’ in de back-yard,” she said cheerily. “He says Arthur’s unaccountable bad. Did ye hear him shruck just now? Unaccountable bad. I reckon t’will come Jenny’s turn to walk in de wood nex’ week along, Mr. Madden.” “Excuse me, Sir, but your lap-robe is slipping,” said Madden deferentially. The woman started, dropped a curtsey, and hurried away. “What does she mean by ‘walking in the wood’?” I asked. “It must be some saying they use hereabouts. I’m from Norfolk myself,” said Madden. “They’re an independent lot in this county. She took you for a chauffeur, Sir.”