Here was my opening. "The fact is--" I began, and stopped from sheer cowardice. The job was too distasteful. To wound that gentle pride in his possessions which was obviously the life of the singular being before me--I couldn't do it. "The fact is," I repeated, "I--I have a friend outside waiting for me. The Little Red Doctor--er--Dr. Smith, you know." "A physician?" he said eagerly. "Would he come in, do you think? Willy Woolly has been quite feverish to-day." "I'll ask him," I replied, and escaped with that excuse. When I broke it to the Little Red Doctor, the mildest thing he said to me was to ask me why I should take him for a dash-binged vet! Appeals to his curiosity finally overpersuaded him, and now it was my turn to wait on the bench while he invaded the realm of the Voices. Happily for me the weather was amiable; it was nearly two hours before my substitute reappeared. He then tried to sneak away without seeing me. Balked in this cowardly endeavor, he put on a vague professional expression and observed that it was an obscure case. "For a man of sixty," I began, "Mr. Merivale--" "_Who_?" interrupted the Little Red Doctor; "I'm speaking of the dog." "Have you, then," I inquired in insinuating accents, "become a dash-binged vet?" "A man can't be a brute, can he!" he retorted angrily. "When that animated mop put up his paws and stuck his tongue out like a child--" "I know," I said. "You took on a new patient. Probably gratis," I added, with malice, for this was one of the Little Red Doctor's notoriously weak points. "Just the same, he's a fool dog." "On the contrary, he is a person of commanding intellect and nice social discrimination," I asserted, recalling Willy Woolly's flattering acceptance of myself. "A faker," asseverated my friend. "He pretends to see things." I sat up straight on my bench. "Things? What kind of things?" "Things that aren't there," returned the Little Red Doctor, and fell to musing. "They couldn't be," he added presently and argumentatively. Receiving no encouragement when I sought further details, I asked whether he had called the new resident to account for the delinquencies of his clocks. He shook his head. "I didn't have time," said he doggedly. "Time? Why, there's nothing but time in that house." The Little Red Doctor chose to take my feeble joke at par. "No time at all. None of the clocks keep it." "How does he manage his life, then?" "Willy Woolly does that for him. Barks him up in the morning. Jogs his elbow at mealtimes. Tucks him in bed at night, for all I know."