Bob was a good fellow, and I spent a pleasant time with him. Old Mrs Bishop, his housekeeper, made me comfortable, and the whole day long my host would keep me laughing at his droll witticisms. Patients, however, were very few and far between. "You see, I'm like the men in Harley Street, my dear old chap," he observed one day, "I'm only consulted as a last resource." I did not feel quite comfortable in accepting his hospitality for more than a week; but when I announced my intention of departing he would not hear of it, and therefore I remained, each week eager for the publication of the _Lancet_ with its lists of assistants wanted. I had been with him three weeks, and assisted him in his extremely small practice, for he sometimes sought my advice as to treatment. Poor old Bob! he was never a very brilliant one in his diagnoses. He always made it a rule to sound everybody, feel their pulses, press down their tongues and make them say, "Ah?" "Must do something for your money," he would say when the patient had gone. "They like to be looked at in the mouth." One afternoon, while we were sitting together smoking in his little den above the surgery, he made a sudden suggestion. "Do you know, Dick--I scarcely like to ask you--but I wonder whether you'd do me a favour?" "Most certainly, old chap," I responded. "Even though you incur a great responsibility?" "What is the responsibility?" "A very grave one. To take charge of this extensive practice while I go down to Bristol and see my people. I haven't been homesick a week." "Why, of course," I responded. "I'll look after things with pleasure." "Thanks. You're a brick. I won't be away for more than a week. You won't find it very laborious. There's a couple of kids with the croup round in Angel Road, a bedridden old girl in Bridge Road, and a man in Beadon Road who seems to have a perpetual stomach ache. That's about all." I smiled. He had not attempted to diagnose the stomach-ache, I supposed. He was, indeed, a careless fellow. "Of course you'll pocket all the fees," he added, with a touch of grim humour. "They're not very heavy--bobs and half-crowns--but they may keep you in tobacco till I come back." And thus I became the _locum tenens_ of the not too extensive practice of Robert Raymond, surgeon, for he departed for Paddington on the following evening, and I entered upon my somewhat lonely duties. The first couple of days passed without incident. I visited the two children with the croup, looked in upon the bedridden relict of a bibulous furniture-dealer, and examined the stomach with the perpetual pain. The latter proved a much more serious case than I had supposed, and from the first I saw that the poor fellow was suffering from an incurable disease. My visits only took an hour, and the rest of the day I spent in the little den upstairs, smoking furiously and reading.