Then he strode away toward the house.
As he went into his office the telephone rang. The office was empty, for
it was dinner-time, and Miss Mathewson was having a day off duty on
account of her mother's illness. So, unhappily for the person at the
other end of the wire, the Doctor himself answered the ring. It had been
a hard day, following other hard days, and he was feeling intense
fatigue, devastating depression, and that unreasoning irritability which
is born of physical weariness and mental unrest.
"Hello," shouted the victim of these disorders into the transmitter.
"What?... No, I can't.... What?... No. Get somebody else.... What?... I
can't, I say.... Yes, you can. Plenty of 'em.... What?... Absolutely
_no_! Good-bye!"
"I ought to feel better after that," muttered Burns, slamming the
receiver on the hook. "But somehow I don't."
In two minutes he was splashing in a hot bath, as always at the end of a
busy day. From the tub he was summoned to the telephone, the upstairs
extension, in his own dressing room. With every red hair erect upon his
head after violent towelling, he answered the message which reached his
unwilling ears.
"What's that? Worse? She isn't--it's all in her mind. Tell her she's all
right. I saw her an hour ago. What?... Well, that's all imagination, as
I've told her ten thousand times. There's absolutely nothing the matter
with her heart.... No, I'm not coming--she's not to be babied like
that.
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