ow the methylated out and make
yourself useful, Dr. Conrad."

"Does she put back the pins when she's done scrubbing?" the doctor
asks, when he has made himself useful.

"She puts them back against another time, so I have understood. I
suppose they live in her mouth. That's yours with two lumps. That is
your mother's--no, I won't pour it yet. She's asleep."

For the fact is that the Goody, anxious to invest herself with an
appearance of forbearance towards the frivolities of youth, readiness
to forego (from amiability) any share in the conversation, insight
into the _rapports_ of others (especially male and female _rapports_),
and general superiority to human weakness, had endeavoured to express
all these things by laying down her knitting, folding her hands on
her circumference, and looking as if she knew and could speak if she
chose. But if you do this, even the maintenance of an attentive
hypodermic smile is not enough to keep you awake--and off you go! The
Goody did, and the smile died slowly off into a snore. Never mind! She
was in want of rest, so she said. It was curious, too, for she seldom
got anything else.

It would have been unfeeling to wake her, so Dr. Vereker went and sat
a good deal nearer Sally, not to make more noise than was necessary.
This reacted, an outsider might have inferred, on the subject-matter
of the conversation, making it more serious in tone. And as Sally put
the little Turk's cap over the pot to keep it warm, and the doctor
knew perfectly well that the blacker the tea was the better his mother
liked it, this lasted until that lady woke up with a start a long
time after, and said she must have been asleep. Then, as Cook was
aware in the kitchen, some more noise came of it, and Sally carried
off Mrs. Shoosmith's certificate.

"You know, Dr. Conrad, it makes you look like a real medical man," she
said at the gate, referring to the detention of the doctor's pill-box,
which awaited him, and he replied that it didn't matter. King, the
driver, looked as if he thought it _did_, and appeared morose. Is it
because coachmen always keep their appointments with society and
society never keeps its appointments with coachmen that a settled
melancholy seems to brood over them, and their souls seem cankered
with misanthropy?

The doctor had rather a rough time that evening. For among the
patients he was going to try to see and get back to dinner (thus ran
current speech of those concerned) there w