"Entirely," I replied. "I recommended it for its medicinal virtues, as
an antidote to mental excitement."

She smiled faintly. "It certainly is not a highly emotional book," she
said, and then asked: "Have you any other instructions to give?"

"Well, I might give the conventional advice--to maintain a cheerful
outlook and avoid worry; but I don't suppose you would find it very
helpful."

"No," she answered bitterly; "it is a counsel of perfection. People in
our position are not a very cheerful class, I'm afraid; but still they
don't seek out worries from sheer perverseness. The worries come
unsought. But, of course, you can't enter into that."

"I can't give any practical help, I fear, though I do sincerely hope
that you father's affairs will straighten themselves out soon."

She thanked me for my good wishes and accompanied me down to the street
door, where, with a bow and a rather stiff handshake, she gave me my
_conge_.

Very ungratefully the noise of Fetter Lane smote on my ears as I came
out through the archway, and very squalid and unrestful the little
street looked when contrasted with the dignity and monastic quiet of
the old garden. As to the surgery, with its oilcloth floor and walls
made hideous with gaudy insurance show-cards in sham gilt frames, its
aspect was so revolting that I flew to the day-book for distraction,
and was still busily entering the morning's visits when the bottle-boy,
Adolphus, entered stealthily to announce lunch.

CHAPTER III

JOHN THORNDYKE

That the character of an individual tends to be reflected in his dress is
a fact familiar to the least observant. That the observation is equally
applicable to aggregates of men is less familiar, but equally true. Do
not the members of fighting professions, even to this day, deck
themselves in feathers, in gaudy colors and gilded ornaments, after the
manner of the African war-chief or the Redskin "brave," and thereby
indicate the place of war in modern civilization? Does not the Church of
Rome send her priests to the altar in habiliments that were fashionable
before the fall of the Roman Empire, in token of her immovable
conservatism? And, lastly, does not the Law, lumbering on in the wake of
progress, symbolize its subjection to precedent by head-gear reminiscent
of the good days of Queen Anne?

I should apologize for intruding upon the reader these somewhat trite
reflections; which were set going by the quaint stock-i