e no one to send?'

'My dear Tom, is your experience of weddings so slight as to suppose
there is an available being in the family the day before?'

'I'm sure I don't desire such experience. Why could not they be
content without ferreting me down?'

'I am very glad you have come. It would have been a great
mortification if you had stayed away. I never quite believed you
would.'

'I had much rather see the operation I shall miss to-morrow morning. I
shall go back by the two o'clock train.'

'To study their happiness all the way up to town?'

'Then by the mail--'

'I won't torment you to stay; but I think papa will want a talk with
you.'

'The very thing I don't want. Why can't he dispose of his property
like other people, and give Richard his rights?'

'You know Richard would only be encumbered.'

'No such thing; Richard is a reasonable being--he will marry some of
these days--get the living after Wilmot, and--'

'But you know how papa would be grieved to separate the practice from
the house.'

'Because he and his fathers were content to bury themselves in a hole,
he expects me to do the same. Why, what should I do? The place is
over-doctored already. Every third person is a pet patient sending for
him for a gnat-bite, gratis, taking the bread out of Wright's mouth.
No wonder Henry Ward kicked! If I came here, I must practise on the
lap-dogs! Here's my father, stronger than any of us, with fifteen good
years' work in him at the least! He would be wretched at giving up to
me a tenth part of his lambs, and that tenth would keep us always in
hot water. His old-world practice would not go down with me, and he
would think everything murder that was fresher than the year 1830.'

'I thought he was remarkable for having gone on with the world,' said
Ethel, repressing some indignation.

'So he has in a way, but always against the grain. He has a tough lot
of prejudices; and you may depend upon it, they would be more obstinate
against me than any one else, and I should be looked on as an undutiful
dog for questioning them, besides getting the whole credit of every
case that went wrong.'

'I think you are unjust,' said Ethel, flushing with displeasure.

'I wish I were not, Ethel; but when there is one son in a family who
can do nothing that is not taken amiss, it is hard that he should be
the one picked out to be pinned down, and, maybe, goaded into doing
something to be really sorry for.'

There