Lord Canterville looked at him from head to foot, exhaling with great promptitude an air of cheerful resignation to a form of grossness threatening to become common. Then he said with a touch of that inconsequence of which he had already given a glimpse: “What the deuce in that case possessed you to turn doctor?” Jackson Lemon coloured a little and demurred, but bethought himself of his best of reasons. “Why, my having simply the talent for it.” “Of course I don’t for a moment doubt your ability. But don’t you,” his lordship candidly asked, “find it rather a bore?” “I don’t practise much. I’m rather ashamed to say that.” “Ah well, of course in your country it’s different. I daresay you’ve got a door-plate, eh?” “Oh yes, and a tin sign tied to the balcony!” Jackson laughed. Here the joke was beyond his friend, who but went on: “What on earth did your father say to it?” “To my going into medicine? He said he’d be hanged if he’d take any of my doses. He didn’t think I should succeed; he wanted me to go into the house.” “Into the House—a—?” Lord Canterville just wondered. “That would be into your Congress?” “Ah no, not so bad as that. Into the store,” Jackson returned with that refinement of the ingenuous which he reserved for extreme cases. His host stared, not venturing even for the moment to hazard an interpretation; and before a solution had presented itself Lady Canterville was on the scene. “My dear, I thought we had better see you. Do you know he wants to marry our second girl?” It was in these simple and lucid terms that her husband acquainted her with the question. She expressed neither surprise nor elation; she simply stood there smiling, her head a little inclined to the side and her beautiful benevolence well to the front. Her charming eyes rested on Doctor Lemon’s; and, though they showed a shade of anxiety for a matter of such importance, his own discovered in them none of the coldness of calculation. “Are you talking about dear Barb?” she asked in a moment and as if her thoughts had been far away. Of course they were talking about dear Barb, and Jackson repeated to her what he had said to her noble spouse. He had thought it all over and his mind was quite made up. Moreover, he had spoken to the young woman. “Did she tell you that, my dear?” his lordship asked while he lighted another cigar. She gave no heed to this inquiry, which had been vague and accidental on the speaker’s part; she simply remarked to their visitor that the thing was very serious and that they had better sit down a moment. In an instant he was near her on the sofa on which she had placed herself and whence she still smiled up at her husband with her air of luxurious patience. “Barb has told me nothing,” she dropped, however, after a little. “That proves how much she cares for me!” Jackson declared with instant lucidity.