“Why, over here, you know, they only call them in to prescribe,” said his other friend. “The profession isn’t—a—what you’d call aristocratic.” “Well, I don’t know it, and I don’t know that I want to know it. How do you mean, aristocratic? What profession is? It would be rather a curious one. Professions are meant to do the work of professions; and what work’s done without your sleeves rolled up? Many of the gentlemen at the congress there are quite charming.” “I like doctors very much,” said Mrs. Freer; “my father was a doctor. But they don’t marry the daughters of marquises.” “I don’t believe Jackson wants to marry that one,” Sidney Feeder calmly argued. “Very possibly not—people are such asses,” said Dexter Freer. “But he’ll have to decide. I wish you’d find out, by the way. You can if you will.” “I’ll ask him—up at the congress; I can do that. I suppose he has got to marry some one.” The young man added in a moment: “And she may be a good thing.” “She’s said to be charming.” “Very well then, it won’t hurt him. I must say, however, I’m not sure I like all that about her family.” “What I told you? It’s all to their honour and glory,” said Mr. Freer. “Are they quite on the square? It’s like those people in Thackeray.” “Oh if Thackeray could have done _this_!” And Mrs. Freer yearned over the lost hand. “You mean all this scene?” asked the young man. “No; the marriage of a British noblewoman and an American doctor. It would have been a subject for a master of satire.” “You see you do want it, my dear,” said her husband quietly. “I want it as a story, but I don’t want it for Doctor Lemon.” “Does he call himself ‘Doctor’ still?” Mr. Freer asked of young Feeder. “I suppose he does—I call him so. Of course he doesn’t practise. But once a doctor always a doctor.” “That’s doctrine for Lady Barb!” Sidney Feeder wondered. “Hasn’t _she_ got a title too? What would she expect him to be? President of the United States? He’s a man of real ability—he might have stood at the head of his profession. When I think of that I want to swear. What did his father want to go and make all that money for?” “It must certainly be odd to them to see a ‘medical man’ with six or eight millions,” Mr. Freer conceded. “They use much the same term as the Choctaws,” said his wife. “Why, some of their own physicians make immense fortunes,” Sidney Feeder remarked. “Couldn’t he,” she went on, “be made a baronet by the Queen?”