A couple of threadbare rugs completed a somewhat depressing "interior." Sara rang the bell a second time, on this occasion with an irritable force that produced clangour enough, one would have thought, to awaken the dead.

It served, at all events, to arouse the living, for presently heavy footsteps could be heard descending the stairs, and, finally, a middle-aged maidservant, whose cap had obviously been assumed in haste, appeared, confronting Sara with an air of suspicion that seemed rather to suggest that she might have come after the spoons.
"The doctor's out," she announced somewhat truculently.

Then, before Sara had time to formulate any reply, she added, a thought more graciously: "Maybe you're a stranger to these parts.

Surgery hour's not till six o'clock." She was evidently fully prepared for Sara to accept this as a dismissal, and looked considerably astonished when the latter queried meekly: "Then can I see Miss Selwyn, please?
I understand Mrs.Selwyn is an invalid." "You're right there.

The mistress isn't up for seeing visitors.