He frowned at her heavily, his black brows meeting, but notwithstanding her avowal of a few minutes before, Daisy only grimaced in return.  He was generally regarded as somewhat formidable, this gruff, square-shouldered doctor, with his iron-grey hair and black moustache, and keenly critical eyes.  There was no varnish in his curt speech, no dissimulation in any of his dealings.  It was said of him that he never sugared his pills.  But his popularity was wide-spread nevertheless.  His help was sought in a thousand ways outside his profession.  To see his strong face melt into a smile was like sunshine on a gloomy day, the village mothers declared.

But Daisy’s gay effrontery did not manage to provoke it at that moment.

“You have no business to take risks,” he said.  “How’s the boy?”

Daisy sobered instantly.  “His teeth have been worrying him rather to-day. Ayah is with him.  I left her crooning him to sleep.  Will you go up?”

Jim Ratcliffe nodded and turned aside to the stairs.  But he had not reached the top when Muriel overtook him, moving more quickly than was her wont.

“Let me come with you, doctor,” she said.

He put his hand on her arm unceremoniously.  “Miss Roscoe,” he said, “I have a message for you—­from my scapegrace Olga.  She wants to know if you will play hockey in her team next Saturday.  I have promised to exert my influence—­if I have any—­on her behalf.”

Muriel looked at him in semi-tragic dismay.  “Oh, I can’t indeed.  Why, I haven’t played for ages,—­not since I was at school.  Besides—­”

“How old are you?” he cut in.

“Nearly twenty,” she told him.  “But—­”

He brought his hand down sharply on her shoulder.  “I shall never call you Miss Roscoe again.  You obtained my veneration on false pretences, and you have lost it for ever.  Now look here, Muriel!” Arrived at the top of the stairs, he stood still and confronted her with that smile of his that so marvellously softened his rugged face.  “I am thirty years older than you are, and I haven’t lived for any part of them with my eyes shut.  I’ve been wanting to give you some advice—­medical advice—­for a long time.  But you wouldn’t have it.  And now I’m not going to offer it to you.  You shall take the advice of a friend instead.  You join Olga’s hockey team, and go paper-chasing with her too.  The monkey is a rare sportswoman.  She’ll give you a good run for your money.  Besides, she has set her heart on having you, and she is a young woman that likes her own way, though, to be sure, she doesn’t always get it.  Come, you can’t refuse when a friend asks you.”

It was difficult, certainly, but Muriel plainly desired to do so.  She had escaped from the whirling vortex of life with strenuous effort, and dragged herself bruised and aching to the bank.  She did not want to step down again into even the minutest eddy of that ruthless flood.  Moreover, in addition to this morbid reluctance she lacked the physical energy that such a step demanded of her.