s quite an anti-climax after the introduction
by Miss Williams.

Another of her devices is to make appointments with an extreme precision
as to time, I being at the moment worked to death (at a cricket match).

"Let us see!" says she, looking at the slate. "He will be clear at seven
minutes past eight this evening. Yes, he could just manage it then. He
has no one at all from seven past to the quarter past"--and so at the
appointed hour I have my patient precipitating himself into my room with
the demeanour of the man who charges in for his bowl of hot soup at a
railway station. If he knew that he is probably the only patient who has
opened my door that evening he would not be in such a hurry--or think so
much of my advice.

One curious patient has come my way who has been of great service to me.
She is a stately looking widow, Turner by name, the most depressingly
respectable figure, as of Mrs. Grundy's older and less frivolous sister.
She lives in a tiny house, with one small servant to scale. Well, every
two months or so she quite suddenly goes on a mad drink, which lasts for
about a week. It ends as abruptly as it begins, but while it is on the
neighbours know it. She shrieks, yells, sings, chivies the servant,
and skims plates out of the window at the passers-by. Of course, it is
really not funny, but pathetic and deplorable--all the same, it is hard
to keep from laughing at the absurd contrast between her actions and
her appearance. I was called in by accident in the first instance; but I
speedily acquired some control over her, so that now the neighbours send
for me the moment the crockery begins to come through the window. She
has a fair competence, so that her little vagaries are a help to me with
my rent. She has, too, a number of curious jugs, statues, and pictures,
a selection of which she presents to me in the course of each of her
attacks, insisting upon my carrying them away then and there; so that I
stagger out of the house like one of Napoleon's generals coming out of
Italy. There is a good deal of method in the old lady, however, and on
her recovery she invariably sends round a porter, with a polite note to
say that she would be very glad to have her pictures back again.

And now I have worked my way to the point where I can show you what I
mean when I talk about fate. The medical practitioner who lives next
me--Porter is his name--is a kindly sort of man, and knowing that I have
had a long uphill fi