Jim set out for the surgery next morning feeling somewhat depressed. His sins were coming home to him. The attitude adopted towards him generally by No. 9 was a hostile one. After the sad disclosures on the previous evening, Miss Bird and Mr Cleave had, metaphorically, turned their backs on him; Mrs Maybury was coldly polite; Miss H. R. Maybury (a thin, angular young lady) barely recognised his presence; and, on the whole, Jim would have spent a most chilly evening had not Mr Maybury invited him to play chess. "Seems to me," said Jim, as he left Derby Crescent, "I’m not in good odour there. Shall I leave or shall I live it down? I should like to leave, but--_hullo_!" This exclamation was caused by the hitherto unnoticed presence of Tom, the great black cat, who had quietly followed Jim out of the Crescent into the main road, and seemed bent on accompanying the young doctor to his destination. Jim endeavoured to make the cat go back, but Tom persisted in accompanying him, and so at length the two reached Mount Street, where Dr Taplow’s surgery was situated. On the pavement by the surgery door a group of meanly clad people were already waiting for "the Doctor." The women--they were all women or children--gazed with interest on the Long ’Un. He was a man most people looked at twice, and to these poor souls he was of peculiar interest, for he was to minister to their ills. And who--in times of sickness--is of greater interest to one than the man who possesses the skill to make one well again? "Waiting to see me?" said Jim, cheerily, "All right--you may come in in a moment." Scouring the passage that lay on the other side of the door was a hag of forbidding appearance. "I am Mr Mortimer," said Jim, in reply to her stare of inquiry. "I have come to take charge of the practice." Passing by her, he opened a door on the right and entered the waiting-room--a bare apartment furnished with a few chairs and a table, on which latter lay a scanty collection of well-thumbed periodicals. Opening out of this was the surgery, which had not been entered, save by the hag aforesaid, since Dr Morgan had come by his untimely end. On the desk lay the open ledger-with its quaint Latin entries--exactly as poor old Morgan had left it. On the shelves were the usual ranks of bottles containing acids, poisons, and other drugs; and here and there on the counter under the shelves stood various dose-glasses, phials, a stethoscope, and a pair of forceps, in whose grim clutch a rotten double tooth that had been wrenched from some unfortunate aching jaw still remained. The place was dirty and untidy, and altogether the sight that met Jim’s eyes was most dispiriting. This was, indeed, a humble surgery in a humble district! Still, Jim did not lose heart. He was fresh from one of the first hospitals in London--in spite of the sudden change in his fortunes he was full of enthusiasm, and eager to apply his knowledge.