observe what a continuous narrative you
get of my proceedings!) when I was set jumping out of my carpet slippers
by a ring at the bell. Through the glass panel I observed that it was a
respectable-looking bearded individual with a top-hat. It was a patient.
It MUST be a patient! Then first I realised what an entirely different
thing it is to treat the patient of another man (as I had done with
Horton) or to work a branch of another man's practice (as I had done
with Cullingworth), and to have to do with a complete stranger on your
own account. I had been thrilling to have one. Now that he had come I
felt for an instant as if I would not open the door. But of course that
was only a momentary weakness. I answered his ring with, I fear, rather
a hypocritical air of insouciance, as though I had happened to find
myself in the hall, and did not care to trouble the maid to ascend the
stairs.

"Dr. Stark Munro?" he asked.

"Pray step in," I answered, and waved him into the consulting-room. He
was a pompous, heavy-stepping, thick-voiced sort of person, but to me he
was an angel from on high. I was nervous, and at the same time so afraid
that he should detect my nervousness and lose confidence in me, that I
found myself drifting into an extravagant geniality. He seated himself
at my invitation and gave a husky cough.

"Ah," said I--I always prided myself on being quick at
diagnosis--"bronchial, I perceive. These summer colds are a little
trying."

"Yes," said he. "I've had it some time."

"With a little care and treatment----" I suggested.

He did not seem sanguine, but groaned and shook his head. "It's not
about that I've come," said he.

"No?" My heart turned to lead.

"No, doctor." He took out a bulging notebook. "It's about a small sum
that's due on the meter."

You'll laugh, Bertie, but it was no laughing matter to me. He wanted
eight and sixpence on account of something that the last tenant either
had or had not done. Otherwise the company would remove the gas-meter.
How little he could have guessed that the alternative he was presenting
to me was either to pay away more than half my capital, or to give up
cooking my food! I at last appeased him by a promise that I should look
into the matter, and so escaped for the moment, badly shaken but still
solvent. He gave me a good deal of information about the state of his
tubes (his own, not the gas company's) before he departed; but I had
rather lost interest in the s