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Betsy.
    Now Alfred began laughing, and choked.
    â€˜Oh, Betsy,’ he said.
    Bert, relieved at the laughter, laughed too, and Betsy said sharply, ‘It’s not funny. If you don’t stop, Bert, you’ll be dead before you know it.’
    Alfred laughed again and Betsy ran out of the room, crying.
    â€˜That’s a shame,’ said Mr. Redway. ‘You mustn’t tease her, in her condition.’ Betsy came back, eyes red, and Mr. Redway got up and took her to the chair. ‘You are quite right, Betsy,’ he said.
    â€˜And now I’m going to finish saying my piece,’ said Betsy. ‘When my Uncle George got so bad, he went to a man in London. He’s a famous doctor, and that’s where you must go too, Bert.’
    Bert, seeing that he was cornered, said, yes, he’d go one of these days.
    â€˜No,’ said Betsy. ‘I’ll take you. I’ll get the address from my mother and I’ll write and make an appointment.’
    And she did.
    On the day of the appointment it was very hot, and she was flushed and uncomfortable, but she said to Alfred, ‘No, I’ll take him. If you go with him he’ll give you the slip and find a pub. He’s afraid of me, you see, but not of you.’
    â€˜Afraid of you?’ said Alfred. ‘Who could be?’
    â€˜You’ll see,’ said Betsy.
    Mr. Redway said she could ride to the station on the old white mare, but Betsy said she wouldn’t enjoy the motion of the horse. She would walk.
    They set off, Mr. Redway, Alfred, Bert and Betsy, along the dusty rutted lane to the station.
    Betsy was looking quite sick with the heat, but she said, ‘Don’t fuss. I’m all right. And this is important.’
    She bribed the guard to find a coupé and she and Bert got on.
    Alfred and Mr. Redway watched the train pull away.
    â€˜Well, Alfred,’ said Mr. Redway, ‘you’ve got a prize girl there.’
    â€˜Yes,’ said Alfred. ‘I know.’
    In London Betsy put her arm through Bert’s and said, ‘And now, Bert, you’re not to go running off for a drink.’
    Bert, who had been planning just that, said, ‘I promise.’
    At the doctor’s in Wimpole Street, Betsy told the receptionist that this was Mr. Redway and she had made an appointment for him, and she took him by the arm into the waiting-room.
    â€˜I say, Betsy, aren’t you riding me a bit too hard?’
    â€˜No. This has to be done, Bert.’
    When the receptionist called them, Betsy took him to thedoctor’s door, saw him in, and then sat down heavily in the waiting-room: she really was feeling knocked out.
    But she had her eye on the doctor’s door and ran to it when, after a good long time, more than an hour, it opened. She received Bert, smiled at the doctor, said, ‘I was the one who wrote to you.’
    â€˜And a very good letter it was,’ said the great man.
    Down in the street, Bert saw that Betsy was scarlet and sweating, and he called a taxi and helped her into it.
    And still she held him tight by the arm, and all the way to the train, and again found the guard and gave him money for a coupé.
    The guard was more alarmed about Betsy than about Bert, who was sober today.
    At the station the other end were Mr. Redway and Alfred, and with them holding her arm on either side, they set off home through the lanes that smelled of may blossom.
    â€˜Oh, that smell,’ said Betsy. ‘It makes me want to be sick.’
    But she held out, got home, and went to lie down.
    It was suppertime.
    Mrs. Redway, in her most suffering, gasping voice, at once demanded to know what the doctor had said. It seemed she imagined she would hear, ‘Nothing much.’ But Bert said, ‘He told me if I didn’t stop drinking I would be dead in ten years.’
    Mrs. Redway dabbed her eyes, moaned, ‘Oh, no,’ and seemed as if she would faint.
    â€˜And so, Bert,’ said