The morning's entries looked already like a sample page of the Post Office directory.

The new calls alone were more than equal to an ordinary day's work, and the routine visits remained to be added.

Gloomily wondering whether the Black Death had made a sudden reappearance in England, I hurried to the dining-room and made a hasty breakfast, interrupted at intervals by the apparition of the bottle-boy to announce new messages.
The first two or three visits solved the mystery.

An epidemic of influenza had descended on the neighbourhood, and I was getting not only our own normal work but a certain amount of overflow from other practices.

Further, it appeared that a strike in the building trade had been followed immediately by a widespread failure of health among the bricklayers who were members of a certain benefit club; which accounted for the remarkable suddenness of the outbreak.
Of course, my contemplated visit to Thorndyke was out of the question.