"Not at all, sir," said Jim, stoutly; "I’m quite willing to take it on." "I believe you are. Well, go and try it. Taplow’s out of town, and has asked me to put somebody in temporarily. I will put you in. Any morbid objections to sleeping in your predecessor’s bedroom?" "None at all," said Jim. "Right! You had better go to the place where he lodged, then. The surgery has no living rooms attached to it--it’s just a surgery and waiting-room. When we get to Harley Street I’ll give you full particulars. Quite sure you don’t mind going?" "Quite," replied Jim. "I do like a man that knows his own mind," said the specialist in a tone of approval. "You needn’t stay there for ever, you know--you’re too good for that sort of work." Jim blushed again. "Still, it’ll tide you over the present difficulty. That’s the point. Ah, yes--and I must also give you the address of the place where you’re to lodge. Better send them a wire. House is about ten minutes’ walk from the surgery; people are gentlefolk, I believe--family--come down in the world. I remember Taplow speaking of them to me--knows something of them, and recommended his man there. One of the daughters is a post-office clerk--very pretty--that’ll suit you, eh?" "I intend to devote myself entirely to work in future, sir," said Jim. "Ah, yes! Quite so--quite so!" said the specialist chuckling. "Let’s see, yes--I recollect--the name is--er--Marcombe--Mayflower--_Maybury_--that’s it." Jim uttered an exclamation. "Eh?--what?" inquired Sir Savile. "N--nothing, sir, nothing!" "Oh," returned the specialist, "I thought you were going to say something." *CHAPTER VIII.* *NUMBER NINE.* Before the era of cheap train services, omnibuses, and trams--when the outer London suburbs of to-day were smiling meadowland, and people talked of Hampstead "village"--there were many residential quarters within a walk of the City on both the Middlesex and Surrey sides of the river. But with the growth of steam power arose great factories, and as fast as these central residential quarters were swept away by commerce, rows and rows of new streets swallowed up the fields that fringed Suburbia, and afforded accommodation to those whose homes in the heart of London were being razed to the ground. But some of these quiet old squares and crescents have survived to this day, and you may still find them here and there, sadly shorn of the respectable family appearance they wore in their youth, and hemmed in by huge and ugly business barracks from whose grimy windows issue the whirr and hiss and thud of machinery, the monotonous clacking of type-writers, and the continuous patter of footsteps on iron-shod stairs.