“Oh, gracious,” he replied, covering his mouth with both hands. “I knew I had forgotten something.”
“Is it my turn?!” Winston demanded, cutting in on their adult conversation impatiently, tweezers aloft. “I am ready!”
Mae nodded, dragging forward a stool and making sure he was steadily perched on it before she let him start. “Do you want the magnifier glass?”
“No!” said Winston. “My eyes are very good!”
“All right,” she said, but nudged it closer anyway, just in case. “Put the threads in that little dish. Don’t just drop them on the floor.”
“I know that, doctress,” Winston said with a frown, leaning close and squinting. “I’d just have to sweep them up anyhow.”
She watched him remove the first little thread, his fingers moving carefully and slowly, and exhaled a little, trusting herself to move her attention back to the patient. “I do have a proposal, actually, toward the matter of preventing further discord in the coming year. Do you think your brother-in-law would be willing to meet with me? To actually hear me out?”
Irving blinked, tilting his balding head to the side. “He would meet with you,” he said. “But he is a bit of a pedant. I can’t promise how well he’ll listen. Perhaps if I join you?”
“I was hoping you would,” Mae said. “Truth be told, every doctor here wants to come with me when I meet with him, and perhaps also a representative from St. Bartholomew’s, to be safe, but I’d rather not cram a dozen people into a single room if we can avoid it.”
“You should bring your grandfather, at the very least,” Irving suggested. “They remember him. They respect him, in a queer way. And his name is on the charter.”
“All done!” Winston announced, sitting back and smacking his lips. “Did it tickle?”
Irving paused, his eyes widening with what appeared to be surprise as he looked down at the lad. “Why, no!” he said. “I didn’t feel it at all. My God, boy, you really do have a surgeon’s hands!”
After that, Mae did not wish to puncture Winston’s glee.
There was only a final moment, right before the inspector departed, where he pressed her hand into a respectful shake and promised, “I will arrange it.”
PART VI
AMBULATION
CHAPTER 29
Roland waited until the inspector had gone and Winston had returned to his towel full of needles, which Sally handed him with narrowed eyes and a huff.
He was going to ask. He was ready to, but Mae came to him first, taking his hands and smiling up at him like he was the very sun itself, and he lost all powers of speech.
“I have something to show you,” she whispered. “Come up to the classroom.”
She pulled a stack of loose papers from the medicine cabinet and hopped up the stairs with him trailing after her, unable to hide the smile that was growing on his face at the swish of her skirt and the spring in her step.
She seemed so much restored lately, since their night together in Soho.
She seemed hopeful again.
Ezra was at the chalkboards when they entered, writing vowel lessons on one of the new chalkboards opposite example words of each vowel sound on the other one, in a different color of chalk, while Dinah watched from atop one of the desks, her feet swinging.
“You have to caveat the double O sound in a clinic, Ezra,” she taunted. “Yes, it makes the sound in fool, but English is stupid, and it also makes the sound in blood.”
He paused, frowning and looking over his shoulder at her. “Blast,” he said. “You’re right.”
“Double O,” she said, pointing at the chalkboard and then at him. “Bloody fool.”
“All right,” said Mae, clearly hiding a laugh. “Go back to the nursery before there’s an incident.”
“Fine,” Dinah said with a sigh, flouncing off the desk with a smirk. “But I’ll be back.”
“I’ve no doubt you will,” Mae replied, watching her go and swinging the door shut behind her. “Little minx.”
