“I will tell you,” Irving promised him, patting his head.
She caught Roland’s eye as they moved toward the room and nodded when he raised his brows at her, his posture shifting only slightly from where he was leaned against the back wall, near two patients, one getting a rosewater rinse on an infected eye and the other waiting for leeches to do their work on bulging veins along her calves.
He pushed off the wall and followed them quietly into the procedure room without further fuss.
“I did something very clever,” the inspector confided, speaking directly to Winston. “I had my wife repair my torn trousers with a buttoned pocket, so that I may open them right where the injury was when I came back. Look at this!”
He proudly propped himself on the treatment cot and twisted to show the little window his wife had put in the trousers.
Mae was genuinely impressed. “That is very clever,” she said. “This was your idea or hers?”
“Mine entirely!” he said, with a blush and a twist of his lips. “But only after she told me it could be done. I am hopeless with a needle. I’m sure you could never understand, Miss Casper.”
“You can’t sew?” Winston said, sounding disappointed. “Why not?”
The inspector smiled at him and held his hands out flat in the air. They quivered there, his fingers twitching. “Unsteady hands, I’m afraid,” he said with a shrug. “My penmanship is also a travesty.”
Winston blinked and held his own hands out the same way, looking nervous about it until he observed that his did not shake the same way.
“Wash those,” Mae said, nodding toward the basin. “You’ve been crawling around on the floor.”
She bent down to inspect the sutures in the inspector’s leg, nodding with approval at how cleanly they had healed into place. “You did a wonderful job keeping these clean,” she told him. “They are ready to come out today.”
She stood up and followed Winston to the basin to rinse her own hands, dry them, and dust them with talc. “I will snip and you can pull with the little tweezers if Mr. Irving gives you leave,” she said to him. “You must ask his permission.”
“He has it,” Irving announced. “Just be gentle, lad. I am ticklish!”
“Me too!” Winston confided, sounding giddy as he went bounding toward the tray in search of the curved tweezers. “Especially under my arms.”
“It’s the feet for me,” Irving told him, looking utterly charmed.
“Do you have children, sir?” Mae asked, turning back to him. “You seem a natural father.”
He shook his head, still smiling. “Sadly not. We were never blessed so. But I had my nephew coming up and now I’ve met dear Dr. Winston here.”
Roland shifted a little from his spot by the door, looking thoughtful. He met Mae’s eye but did not speak or otherwise move to intervene.
“I am glad you came back to us,” Mae said, rolling the tray closer to him and looking for her narrow scissors. “I wanted to thank you personally for the gifts you sent and tell you what a difference they have made for us. I use the mortar and pestleevery single day. It is a vast improvement on my old one made of stone.”
“I am pleased to hear it,” he said, his voice gone a little softer as she made the first snip. “And I trust you have had no more trouble with my nephew or his fellows?”
She glanced up.
Snip.
“Not a peep,” she said. “If that was your doing, then I am doubly thankful.”
“I had words with his father,” Irving said, giving a little frown at the third snip. “He was … well, less than helpful. If Lady Aster hadn’t been here to personally threaten me that day, I don’t think I’d have gotten through to them. Making mischief at a charity institution is one thing, but assaulting a peer is quite another, you understand. I am terribly sorry about all of it.”
Mae sighed.
Snip.
“You did what you could,” she said. “And it worked, for now. The Season is practically over at this point, anyhow. I think the best course of action at present is to prevent this starting up again in earnest next year.”
“I would help with that,” said Irving. “If I could. All I can offer is to be fair and honest in my inspections. But, Miss Casper, I hope you know that I always was, even before.”
She gave him a little smile. “You do still owe us a pair of forceps.”
