pare it with that evening. The doctor
perceived that I was serious. He gazed at me with pity, as if to say:
'Poor frail southern organism! It ought to be in bed, with nothing
inside it but tea!' What he did actually say was: 'You come round to my
place, I'll soon put you right!' 'Can you stop me from having a
headache tomorrow?' I eagerly asked. 'I think so,' he said with calm
northern confidence.

At some later hour Mr Brindley and I 'went round'. Mr Colclough would
not come. He bade me good-bye, as his wife had done, with the most
extraordinary kindness, the most genuine sorrow at quitting me, the
most genuine pleasure in the hope of seeing me again.

'There are three thousand books in this room!' I said to myself, as I
stood in the doctor's electrically lit library.

'What price this for a dog?' Mr Brindley drew my attention to an
aristocratic fox-terrier that lay on the hearth. 'Well, Titus! Is it
sleepy? Well, well! How many firsts has he won, doctor?'

'Six,' said the doctor. 'I'll just fix you up, to begin with,' he
turned to me.

After I had been duly fixed up ('This'll help you to sleep, and THIS'll
placate your "god",' said the doctor), I saw to my intense surprise
that another 'evening' was to be instantly superimposed on the
'evening' at Mr Colclough's. The doctor and Mr Brindley carefully and
deliberately lighted long cigars, and sank deeply into immense
arm-chairs; and so I imitated them as well as I could in my feeble
southern way. We talked books. We just simply enumerated books without
end, praising or damning them, and arranged authors in neat pews, like
cattle in classes at an agricultural show. No pastime is more agreeable
to people who have the book disease, and none more quickly fleets the
hours, and none is more delightfully futile.

Ages elapsed, and suddenly, like a gun discharging, Mr Brindley said--

'We must go!'

Of all things that happened this was the most astonishing.

We did go.

'By the way, doc.,' said Mr Brindley, in the doctor's wide porch, 'I
forgot to tell you that Simon Fuge is dead.'

'Is he?' said the doctor.

'Yes. You've got a couple of his etchings, haven't you?'

'No,' said the doctor. 'I had. But I sold them several months ago.'

'Oh!' said Mr Brindley negligently; 'I didn't know. Well, so long!'

We had a few hundred yards to walk down the silent, wide street, where
the gas-lamps were burning with the strange, endless patience that
gas-lamps have. The st