thoughts.

Buller entered and closed the door behind him.

The doctor, who was writing, and referring every now and then to certain
long slips of printed paper which were lying on the table at his side,
did not speak or look up, but merely raised his hand to intimate that he
must not be disturbed for a moment. So Buller looked round the room;
and noted things as one does so vividly whenever one is in a funk in a
strange place; in a dentist's waiting-room, say. The apartment was
wonderfully comfortable. The book-cases which surrounded it were
handsome, solid, with nice little fringes of stamped leather to every
shelf. The books were neatly arranged, and splendidly bound, many of
them in Russia leather, as the odour of the room testified. Between the
book-cases, the wall-paper was dark crimson, and there were a few really
good oil-paintings. The fireplace was of white marble, handsomely
carved, with Bacchantes, and Silenus on his donkey--not very appropriate
guardians of a sea-coal fire. On the mantel-piece was a massive bronze
clock, with a figure of Prometheus chained to a rock on the top, and the
vulture digging into his ribs. And Buller, as he noticed this,
remembered, with the clearness afforded by funk spoken of above, that an
uncle of his, who was an ardent homeopathist, had an explanation of his
own of the old Promethean myth. He maintained that Prometheus typified
the universal allopathic patient, and that the vulture for ever gnawing
his liver was Calomel. The clock was flanked on each side by a
grotesque figure, also in bronze. Two medieval bullies had drawn their
swords, and were preparing for a duel, which it was apparent that
neither half liked. A very beautiful marble group, half life-size,
stood in one corner, and gave an air of brightness to the whole room.
And on a bracket, under a glass case, there was a common pewter quart
pot, which the doctor would not have exchanged for a vase of gold. For
it was a trophy of his prowess on the river in old college days, and
bore the names of good friends, now dead, side by side with his own.
The table at which the doctor sat was large, with drawers on each side
for papers, and a space in the middle for his legs, and was covered with
documents collected under paper-weights. It took Tom Buller just two
minutes to note all these objects, and then the doctor looked up with an
expression of vacancy which vanished when he saw who stood before him.
He tossed