good!” said the old man testily, as he took the implement.
“Ain’t anybody going to apologize to me?” asked Hooper, scowling.
“Oh, get out, Sergeant!” said Beaumaroy good-naturedly. “We can’t bother about your finer feelings.” He glanced anxiously at Mr. Saffron. “All right now, aren’t you, sir?” he inquired.
Mr. Saffron drank his glass of wine. “I am perhaps too sensitive to any kind of inattention; but it’s not wholly unnatural in my position, Hector.”
“We both desire to be attentive and respectful, sir. Don’t we, Hooper?”
“Oh my, yes!” grinned the Sergeant, showing his very ugly teeth. “It’s only owing that we ‘aven’t quite been brought up in royal palaces.”
CHAPTER IV. — PROFESSIONAL ETIQUETTE
Dr. Irechester was a man of considerable attainments and an active, though not very persevering, intellect. He was widely read both in professional and general literature, but had shrunk from the arduous path of specialization. And he shrank even more from the drudgery of his calling. He had private means, inherited in middle life; his wife had a respectable portion; there was, then, nothing in his circumstances to thwart his tastes and tendencies. He had soon come to see in the late Dr. Evans a means of relief rather than a threat of rivalry; even more easily he slipped into the same way of regarding Mary Arkroyd, helped thereto by a lingering feeling that, after all and in spite of all, when it came to really serious cases, a woman could not, at best, play more than second fiddle. So, as has been seen, he patronized and encouraged Mary; he told himself that, when she had thoroughly proved her capacity—within the limits which he ascribed to it—to take her into partnership would not be a bad arrangement. True, he could pretty well choose his patients now; but as senior partner he would be able to do it completely. It was well-nigh inconceivable that, for example, the Naylors—great friends—should ever leave him; but he would like to be quite secure of the pick of new
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