ing the
tea-table. Dudley Veneer was very polite to the Widow; but that lady
having been called off for a few moments for some domestic arrangement,
he slid back to the side of Helen Darley, his daughter's faithful
teacher. Elsie had got away by herself, and was taken up in studying the
stereoscopic Laocoon. Dick, being thus set free, had been seized upon by
Mrs. Blanche Creamer, who had diffused herself over three-quarters of a
sofa and beckoned him to the remaining fourth. Mr. Bernard and Miss
Letty were having a snug fete-'a-fete in the recess of a bay-window. The
two Doctors had taken two arm-chairs and sat squared off against each
other. Their conversation is perhaps as well worth reporting as that of
the rest of the company, and, as it was carried on in a louder tone, was
of course more easy to gather and put on record.

It was a curious sight enough to see those two representatives of two
great professions brought face to face to talk over the subjects they had
been looking at all their lives from such different points of view. Both
were old; old enough to have been moulded by their habits of thought and
life; old enough to have all their beliefs "fretted in," as vintners
say,--thoroughly worked up with their characters. Each of them looked his
calling. The Reverend Doctor had lived a good deal among books in his
study; the Doctor, as we will call the medical gentleman, had been riding
about the country for between thirty and forty years. His face looked
tough and weather-worn; while the Reverend Doctor's, hearty as it
appeared, was of finer texture. The Doctor's was the graver of the two;
there was something of grimness about it, partly owing to the
northeasters he had faced for so many years, partly to long companionship
with that stern personage who never deals in sentiment or pleasantry.
His speech was apt to be brief and peremptory; it was a way he had got by
ordering patients; but he could discourse somewhat, on occasion, as the
reader may find out. The Reverend Doctor had an open, smiling
expression, a cheery voice, a hearty laugh, and a cordial way with him
which some thought too lively for his cloth, but which children, who are
good judges of such matters, delighted in, so that he was the favorite of
all the little rogues about town. But he had the clerical art of
sobering down in a moment, when asked to say grace while somebody was in
the middle of some particularly funny story; and though hi