"Jim!" he yelled. "Annabelle breakfasted yet?"
Annabelle was his shabby little car.
Annabelle had breakfasted, on gasoline, oil and water. The doctor
finished tying his tie, singing lustily, and went to the door.
At the door he stopped singing, put on a carefully professional
air, restrained an impulse to slide down the stairrail, and
descended with the dignity of a man with a growing practice and
a possible patient in the waiting-room.
At half-past seven he was on his way to the hospital. He stopped
at the market and bought three dozen oranges out of a ten-dollar
bill he had won on the election, and almost bought a live rabbit
because it looked so dreary in its slatted box. He restrained
himself, because his housekeeper had a weakness for stewed rabbit,
and turned into Cardew Way. He passed the Doyle house slowly,
inspecting it as he went, because he had a patient there, and
because he had felt that there was something mysterious about the
household, quite aside from the saturnine Doyle himself. He
knew all about Doyle, of course; all, that is, that there was to
know, but he was a newcomer to the city, and he did not know that
Doyle's wife was a Cardew.
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