Shaking out into my hand a couple of the tiny discs, I drew down the patient's under-lip and slipped the little tablets under his tongue.

Then I quickly replaced the tube and dropped the case into my bag; and I had hardly done so when the door opened softly and the housekeeper entered the room.
"How do you find Mr.Graves ?" she asked in what I thought a very unnecessarily low tone, considering the patient's lethargic state.
"He seems to be very ill," I answered.
"So!" she rejoined, and added: "I am sorry to hear that.

We have been anxious about him." She seated herself on the chair by the bedside, and, shading the candle from the patient's face--and her own, too--produced from a bag that hung from her waist a half-finished stocking and began to knit silently and with the skill characteristic of the German housewife.

I looked at her attentively (though she was so much in the shadow that I could see her but indistinctly) and somehow her appearance prepossessed me as little as did that of the other members of the household.

Yet she was not an ill-looking woman.