s on his
wife's part seemed to detract from her personal dignity. He could never
though have got Polly to see it. Undignified to do a kindness? What a
funny, selfish idea! The fact was, there was a certain streak in
Polly's nature that made her more akin to all these good people than to
him--him with his unsociable leanings towards a hermit's cell; his
genuine need of an occasional hour's privacy and silence, in which to
think a few thoughts through to the end.

On coming in from his rounds he turned out an old linen jacket that
belonged to his bachelor days, and raked up some books he had not
opened for an almost equally long time. He also steered clear of
friends and acquaintances, went nowhere, saw no one but his patients.
And Ellen, to whose cookery Polly had left him with many misgivings,
took things easy. "He's so busy reading, he never knows what he puts in
his mouth. I believe he'd eat his boot-soles, if I fried 'em up neat
wid a bit of parsley," she reported over the back fence on Doctor's odd
ways.

During the winter months the practice had as usual fallen off. By now
it was generally beginning to look up again; but this year, for some
reason, the slackness persisted. He saw how lean his purse was,
whenever he had to take a banknote from it to enclose to Polly; there
was literally nothing doing, no money coming in. Then, he would
restlessly lay his book aside, and drawing a slip of paper to him set
to reckoning and dividing. Not for the first time he found himself in
the doctor's awkward quandary: how to be decently and humanly glad of a
rise in the health-rate.

He had often regretted having held to the half-hundred shares he had
bought at Henry Ocock's suggestion; had often spent in fancy the sum
they would have brought in, had he sold when they touched their highest
figure. Such a chance would hardly come his way again. After the one
fictitious flare-up, "Porepunkahs" had fallen heavily--the first main
prospect-drive, at a depth of three hundred and fifty feet, had failed
to strike the gutter--and nowadays they were not even quoted. Thus had
ended his single attempt to take a hand in the great game.

One morning he sat at breakfast, and thought over his weekly epistle to
Polly. In general, this chronicled items of merely personal interest.
The house had not yet been burnt down--her constant fear, when absent;
another doctor had got the Asylum; he himself stood a chance of being
elected to the Committee