One morning about three months later, my butler, footman,
valet-de-chambre, chauffeur, and general supervisor, McAndrew, thrust
his head round the dining-room door as I sat at breakfast and
announced:
"There's a wee body in the hall."
I have known McAndrew for seven years now, and I understand his
vernacular. We met in that great rendezvous of all time, the Western
Front, on a day when I took command of a Field Ambulance in which
McAndrew was functioning as a stretcher-bearer. When our unit was
demobilized in Nineteen Nineteen, McAndrew came before me and
announced that he had relinquished all intention of resuming his
former profession of "jiner" in his native Dumbarton, and desired
henceforth to serve me in the capacity mentioned above for the joint
term of our natural lives. I took him on, and he does very well. He
has his own ideas about how to wait at table, and his methods with
unauthenticated callers are apt to be arbitrary; but he is clean and
honest, and--well, he wears a vertical gold stripe on his left sleeve
and three ribbons just above his watch-pocket. That is enough for me.
As I say, his vernacular now contains no mysteries for me. So when
he made the alarming announcement just mentioned I realized at once
that no case of infant mortality had occurred on my premises, but
that a person of small stature desired an interview.
"Man or woman?" I asked.
"A lassie."
"A patient?"
"I couldna say: she wouldna tell me," replied McAndrew, not without
bitterness.
"Bring her in," I said. Forthwith the Ancient Mariner was ushered
into my presence.
"Grampa's in bed with one of his legs again," she announced.