“Oh,” said the doctor, “if your wit and his are both to be leveled at me, I had better stop your mouths. Dinner! dinner! Sir Charles, will you take Miss Wieland? Sorry we have not another lady to keep you company, madam.” “Are you? Then I'm not,” said the lady smartly. The dinner passed like any other, only Rolfe observed that Dr. Suaby took every fair opportunity of drawing the pluckless Mr. Hyam into conversation, and that he coldly ignored the Exquisite. “I have seen that young man about town, I think,” said Mr. Rolfe. “Where was it, I wonder?” “The Argyll Rooms, or the Casino, probably.” “Thank you, doctor. Oh, I forgot; you owed me one. He is no favorite of yours.” “Certainly not. And I only invited him medicinally.” “Medicinally? That's too deep for a layman.” “To flirt with Miss Wieland. Flirting does her good.” “Medicine embraces a wider range than I thought.” “No doubt. You are always talking about medicine; but you know very little, begging your pardon.” “That is the theory of compensation. When you know very little about a thing you must talk a great deal about it. Well, I'm here for instruction; thirsting for it.” “All the better; we'll teach you to drink deep ere you depart.” “All right: but not of your favorite Acetate of Morphia; because that is the draught that takes the reason prisoner.” “It's no favorite of mine. Indeed, experience has taught me that all sedatives excite; if they soothe at first, they excite next day. My antidotes to mental excitement are packing in lukewarm water, and, best of all, hard bodily exercise and the perspiration that follows it. To put it shortly--prolonged bodily excitement antidotes mental excitement.” “I'll take a note of that. It is the wisest thing I ever heard from any learned physician.” “Yet many a learned physician knows it. But you are a little prejudiced against the faculty.” “Only in their business. They are delightful out of that. But, come now, nobody hears us--confess, the system which prescribes drugs, drugs, drugs at every visit and in every case, and does not give a severe selection of esculents the first place, but only the second or third, must be rotten at the core. Don't you despise a layman's eye. All the professions want it.” “Well, you are a writer; publish a book, call it Medicina laici, and send me a copy.” “To slash in the _Lancet?_ Well, I will: when novels cease to pay and truth begins to.” In the course of the evening Mr. Rolfe drew Dr. Suaby apart, and said, “I must tell you frankly, I mean to relieve you of one of your inmates.”