Not to be known to Dr. Prater was to confess that the "pleasure of your acquaintance" was of little value; for assuredly, had it been worth any thing, Dr. Prater would have had it by hook or by crook. A wonderful man, Dr. Prater, who had risen from nothing, as his detractors said; but however that might be, he had a practice scarcely excelled by any in London. Heart and lungs were Dr. Prater's specialities; and persons imagining themselves afflicted in those regions came from all parts of England, and thronged the doctor's dining room in Queen-Anne Street in the early forenoons, vainly pretending to read Darwin _On the Fertilisation of Orchids, the Life of Captain Hedley Vicars_, or the Supplement of yesterday's _Times_; and furtively glancing round at the other occupants of the room, and wondering what was the matter with them. That dining-room looked rather different about a dozen times in the season, of an evening, when the books were cleared away, and the big bronze gas-chandelier lighted, and the doctor sat at the large round-table surrounded by a dozen of the pleasantest people in London. Such a mixture! Never was such a man for "bringing people together" as Dr. Prater. The manager of the Italian Opera (Dr. Prater's name was to all the sick-certificates for singers) would be seated next to a judge, who would have a leading member of the Jockey Club on his other hand, and a bishop for his _vis-à-vis_. Next the bishop would be a cotton-lord, next to him the artist of a comic periodical, and next to him a rising member of the Opposition, with an Indian colonel and an American comedian, here on a starring engagement, in juxtaposition. The dinner was always good, the wines excellent, and the doctor was the life and soul of the party. He had something special to say to every one; and as his big protruding eyes shone and glimmered through his gold-rimmed spectacles, he looked like a convivial little owl. A very different man over the dinner-table to the smug little pale-faced man in black, whom wretched patients found in the morning sitting behind a leather-covered table, on which a stethoscope was conspicuously displayed, and who, after sounding the chests of consumptive curates or struggling clerks, would say, with an air of blandness, dashed with sorrow, "I'm afraid the proverbially treacherous air of our climate will not do for us, my dear sir! I'm afraid we must spend our winter at Madeira, or at least at Pau. _Good_ day to you;" and then the doctor, after shaking hands with his patient, would slip the tips of his fingers into his trousers-pockets, into which would fall another little paper-package to join a number already there deposited, while the curate or clerk, whose yearly income was perhaps two hundred pounds, and who probably had debts amounting to twice his annual earnings, would go away wondering whether it was better to endeavour to borrow the further sum necessary at ruinous interest, or to go back