I therefore wrote to Clark, saying that the
changed circumstances of course annulled my acceptance of his offer,
though I had already incurred the inconvenience of negotiating with a
_locum tenens_.
This decided it: Peters was to go, I stay. The fifth day before the
departure dawned. It was a Friday, the 15th June. Peters was now in an
arm-chair. He was cheerful, but with a fevered pulse, and still the
stomach-pains. I was giving him three quarter-grains of morphia a day.
That Friday night, at 11 P.M., I visited him, and found Clodagh there,
talking to him. Peters was smoking a cigar.
'Ah,' Clodagh said, 'I was waiting for you, Adam. I didn't know whether
I was to inject anything to-night. Is it Yes or No?'
'What do you think, Peters?' I said: 'any more pains?'
'Well, perhaps you had better give us another quarter,' he answered:
'there's still some trouble in the tummy off and on.'
'A quarter-grain, then, Clodagh, 'I said.
As she opened the syringe-box, she remarked with a pout:
'Our patient has been naughty! He has taken some more atropine.
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