ed at the Admiral Collingwood, the nearest approach to an inn in
the old town. The word "omnibus" applied to it was not meant literally
by Padlock, but only as a declaration of his indifference as to which
four of the planet's teeming millions rode in it. This time there was
no one else except a nice old farmer's wife, who spoke _to_ each of
the ladies as "my dear," and _of_ each of them as "your sister."
Rosalind was looking wonderfully young and handsome, certainly. They
secured all the old lady's new-laid eggs, because there would be
Mrs. Vereker in the evening. We like adhering to these ellipses of
daily life.

Next morning Sally took Dr. Vereker for a walk round to show him the
place. Try to fancy the condition of a young man of about thirty, who
had scarcely taken his hand from the plough of general practice for
four years--for his holidays had been mighty insignificant--suddenly
inaugurating three weeks of paradise in _the_ society man most
covets--of delicious seclusion remote from patients, a happy valley
where stethoscopes might be forgotten, and carbolic acid was unknown,
where diagnosis ceased from troubling, and prognosis was at rest. He
got so intoxicated with Sally that he quite forgot to care if the
cases he had left to Mr. Neckitt (who had been secured as a substitute
after all) survived or got terminated fatally. Bother them and their
moist _rales_ and cardiac symptoms, and effusions of blood on the brain!

Dr. Conrad was a young man of an honest and credulous nature, with a
turn for music naturally, and an artificial bias towards medicine
infused into him by his father, who had died while he was yet a boy.
His honesty had shown itself in the loyalty with which he carried out
his father's wishes, and his credulity in the readiness with which he
accepted his mother's self-interested versions of his duty towards
herself. She had given him to understand from his earliest years that
she was an unselfish person, and entitled to be ministered unto, and
that it was the business of every one else to see that she did not
become the victim of her own self-sacrifice. At the date of this
writing her son was passing through a stage of perplexity about his
duty to her in its relation to his possible duty to a wife undefined.
That he might not be embarrassed by too many puzzles at once, he
waived the question of who this wife was to be, and ignored the fact
that would have been palpable to any true reading of his mi